To The Hearth There Comes A Stranger
by Khevsureti
Summary: Arrested in a riot in a seedy district of the capital, a half-breed orphan named Naleva finds that the Empire intends to send her to Vvardenfell for reasons unknown
1. Chapter 1

"Naleva," the warden's assistant said, and yawned. That accomplished, he wiped the spittle on the hem of his tabard, one more stain on the bleached colors of the Lockbox District. The insignia happened to be Morihaus rampant, with clipped wings reminding everyone that they sat in the wrong sort of prison. Holding areas on each fragment of Cyrodiil City's fused archipelago had their own forgiving, neighborly feel to them, but here everyone was a stranger. Imperial justice doesn't rouse itself for petty criminals, so its inmates are usually over towards the dire end of the scale. Lucky for me.

The guard had no idea who in the cell would answer him. He just waited with the foul air swirling about his head, not even bothering to look at the apprentice-killing burgher's wife, the goldenrod Numidiumist inciter or the hag who never really got over the Simulacrum. Nor at me, of course. Yes, I was there too. And damning my own chromatically-confused eyes with every breath.

"Naleva S?"

I jingled my manacles by way of response, and he approached to unlatch them from the petrified wood of the bench. Colovian fingers (pale but hairy, you know the kind) flipped up the tag on the prison bib I had been given a fortnight ago, exposing the expected initials.

"Paperwork for you, N. S."

There were rice grains caught between his tabard and belt. I wish I could say I didn't want to peck at them.

"My favorite, boss."

We left the cell. The drafty air in the hall was so novel that I forgot to keep pace, and was dragged along by the wrists as the wonderfully mobile atmosphere chilled and refreshed all at once.

"Sit."

Now we're in that side office sort of room at the end of the passage. I've been handed over to a clerk from up topsides somewhere. He has a file. Why the hell am I in a file?

They sit me down. The clerk opposite looks nonplussed.

"Your full name?"

"You already have it."

"What does the S stand for?

"Well..."

"Tell me your family name, prisoner, unless you enjoy being underground."

I sigh.

"S stands for Serendipity. And it's not my family name."

"Seren... An alias? Street moniker, perhaps?"

I swear the bastard was smirking.

"Not even. Just something I was called once or twice. Look, the watch _really _wanted to hear a surname, and the name's just Naleva. Nothing before or after that. Orphanage mark, see?"

I laid the back of my hand on the table to reveal the tattoo of a gypsy moth and a goshawk.

"Ah, born into one of Pelagius' foundling outfits, were you?"

"Up in Cheydinhal, yes."

There's a hint of pride in my voice despite myself. Back in the days when the population of street children was considered a problem, rather than part of the scenery, the throne set up endowments for vocational orphanages. Most were religious, grooming gutter trash for life as clergymen, but a few focused on military training or taught a trade. Some institutions acted like orphan entrepots, sorting their charges based on potential aptitude (usually determined by race) and sending them off to the relevant affiliate organizations. Being of no clear race or creed myself, I fell in with a different sort. The head of my adopted family ran things in a rather unorthodox fashion, but taking in a million drakes from export speculation allows a certain degree of independence. He funded half of the clan himself, driven to it by some sort of intense faith in Zenithar that he kept to himself, probably because it was heretical. Unlike other groups, we were often on the move. Galenus taught us to defend ourselves while we lived off the land through a combined effort of foraging, hunting and peddling. I still can't fathom why a man who had gotten rich off the abstractions and excesses of civilization decided on autarky for us. Whatever his reasons, my eccentric patron took on the smartest of us as business proteges, and a few of us as concubines. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we were strangers to society and experienced a general failure to make anything else of ourselves individually. So the clan went on even after the first generation grew up. There were a few tight-knit orphanages like that, and some even considered applying for guild charters. What we would have been a guild of, I don't know. But that was my childhood, and my life afterwards, as I saw to Galenus in his old age with a dwindling number of hangers-on. I left him in his room with the curtains drawn, all the servants dismissed and assets liquidated, rice mush dribbling down his chin. When I was arrested, that is.

"So you definitely were orphaned, then," the clerk said, almost to himself. I glanced at him incredulously.

"Do you know your parents names?"

"No."

"And can you confirm the birth date present in our records?"

He slid a sheaf of paper over the table towards me, jealously covering everything but the pertinent date.

"Yeah, that looks about right. When will I be told why I'm being held?"

More papers appeared from the brief, and my host adopted an even more disinterested tone for the purpose of reading.

"Naleva S. Nibennium Menor, Imperial City. No listed occupation. No family. No charter affiliations. Detained in mass arrest of participants in major tribal/racial incident. Held on suspicion of participation in violent riots in the Skiffs Market, Paravant Ward, triggered by Trans-Niben conflict rumors."

"Wrong place at the wrong time, really."

"Subject was not vouched for by any local millet chiefs..."

This wasn't the first time that being a half-caste had proved less than empowering, but it was probably the worst so far. My father was dunmer and my mother was human, from somewhere or other. From him I get a rather gravelly voice (the most pronounced of several conspicuously masculine features), plus skin that is sallow at dawn and gray at dusk. Also there are the eyes, which are laced with red like a bit of die poured into stew and not properly stirred. On the whole they are dark and tend to suck to suck in the light, which makes me think there may be some wood elf in the cocktail. And because none of the different ethnic magistrates in my own neighborhood would call me their own, I couldn't be treated according to any of their respective legal regimes and...

"...was accordingly incarcerated in Imperial facilities. Held for six days on suspicion of belonging to anti-beastfolk militia—"

"Like hell! I don't give a damn who owns that malarial swamp down south or who walks where and with what kind of claws."

"...and released on the first of Last Seed when no charges could be filed."

"Last Seed! That was a week ago! What by Mara's Tit's have I—"

"That was your final interruption, prisoner." He straightened a handful of papers by way of emphasis, making a slapping sound on the table as he jostled them. I realized for the first time that the leather folder they came from bore a seal drawn in wax. It was a scrying sigil, which meant that someone else was watching remotely. What they were getting out of this excuse for an interrogation was beyond me.

"A clerical error was indeed made. You were scheduled for release, but higher authorities intervened in your case."

Always nice when the Empire is looking out for you.

"It was determined that you should be repatriated as soon as suitable transport could be arranged."

"_Re_-patriated?"

"To Morrowind, yes."

"Why am I being _patriated?_"

"Your file doesn't say. However, you are entitled to know that you will travel at our expense before being discharged from Imperial custody on the island of Vvardenfell. Bear in mind that your residence status shall remain unchanged, so your freedom of movement in Vvardenfell District may be contingent upon your conduct and responsiveness to Imperial strictures."

What. Maybe time to pull out the stops.

"But I—How can—exile! Why?"

I plunged my fingers into my hair in what would be a passably melodramatic gestures if not for all the knots and the lice skittering across my scalp.

"What about my possessions? Will you notify—"

He cleared his throat with annoyance, but the nervous kind that told me he wasn't used to dealing with pleading convicts. More rustling papers.

"Ah, here we are.. We have ascertained that all your personal effects can be considered the property of one Galenus Calabriat. Legally, we are not obliged to pass any information on to any third party, given the _informal _natures of all your acquaintances. Not that the law is such a great encumbrance in this case at any rate..." Was that a disapproving note in his voice? "You may be interested to hear that neither you nor any other former members of your orphanage is a beneficiary of your benefactor's inheritance."

I already knew that, never expected anything different. Still stings.

"Will I be imprisoned once I get to Vvardenfell?" I ventured in a small voice. Less acting this time. The depth of the information he had suddenly retrieved was probing my spine with frigid fingers. Some one cared far too much about me.

"Well, perhaps we might just..." That could have been a flash of sympathy. This fellow certainly did not belong down here in the sordid dark, and they hadn't clerked and accounted the humanity out of him yet.

"Or the mines? I'd take a cell over the mines."

My interrogator reached deep into the brief and retrieved an elliptical piece of silk.

"This may allay your concern... oh—" He hissed away an uncouth word. "...more of their hypnogogic flimflam!"

I couldn't make out any recognizable alphabet on the oddly-shaped missive as he flapped it about.

"Translation, please!" The prison obligingly interpreted his bellow as a series of tinny echoes. There was silence for a few moments, then light, scuffing footsteps in the corridor. The folder containing my file tipped over, burying the surveilling mark in the tabletop as the door inched open.

"Thank you for your assistance, Melior," said the clerk.

No such Melior yet emerged, however. He was preceded by the flickery shape of a moth. It seemed to disappear between wingbeats in the dim light, blinking between points in the room from moment to moment. Then all at once it had alighted on my wrist, not too far from the tattoo it so resembled, its spread wings exactly the color of my skin.

I'm looking at my little guest, and then in walks a real character. Anyone who can rightfully call themselves a CiCi has come across them during festival days. The devotees to this or that ancestor/animal cult, looking like they stepped out of five hundred years ago for an evening stroll, the bits of Cyrodiil that are too Nibenean for common decency, embarrassing us supposedly modern Imperials in front of whatever Altmeri or Nordic types that happen to be passing by. This guy has the beaded shawl, the robes, the red accouterments, the facial tattoos all over the bald head, the works. Only he's a bit more prestigious than the rest, a moth priest. His winged pet is gone when I look back down to wonder what I have gotten myself into.

My clerk holds up the silk, and Melior gives it a cursory examination. I swear it's not letters on that thing. The monk whispers a few sentences into cupped hands, bows, carefully restores the folder to its upright position with the scrying emblem pointed squarely at me, and leaves.

"Good news for you, Naleva S. You shall a be a free woman, to some extent. I know this is highly irregular, but go along with it and you will be compensated and provided for on arrival. There is still a semblance of judicial procedure left in your case, so I will just assure you that you have not been sentenced and will not be." Nimble clerical hands recomposed the folder, all original contents restored to their proper order and orientation. "And really," he attempted an encouraging smile, "in your situation, a new start in the fatherland can't be so bad, can it?"

I look at him blankly. I'm not going home.


	2. Chapter 2

The first leg of the journey was the worst. They took me down to Rummy without further explanation and we boarded a gondola. I was manacled to the gunwale, facing forward with my hand dangling outboard. We pulled a ways out from Polefel and lake eels started streaming around under the keel. They cut circles in the water beneath my fingers, a hairsbreadth from the surface, hoping for a quick peck of half-breed.

It takes us ten minutes to get clear of City Isle's halo of waterborne filth, out to the divide where the radial current cools the lake and diverts the polluted cloud southwards. The air smells different immediately, and it hits me that I'm leaving. I jerk backwards, iron cutting at my right wrist. The boat sways, the guards frown, and the eels disintegrate into purple Rumare. Still can't see over my shoulder. The city I haven't left in years is a light-colored haze in my peripheral vision. I can hope that we yaw to the left at some point, or I can just picture it.

There're those pearly towers I never looked up at it, whose foundations I never chanced upon, and the big one in the middle. The city beneath, distant cousin to some species of white tropical moss, riding heavily on too-few islands, the gaps between them sewn shut by the cobwebs of a hundred bridges. It lets out smoke all the time, because it's always someone's feast day or hour of offering, if not just an outlandishly scheduled meal. The pall spreads out over the water, and so does the city, always sinking pilings in more and more of the lake, every month another Polefel built on stilts. The voracity for space and material overpowers all the intentions of the lake, creating unnatural currents that draw in vast clots of floating timber. The rafts of tomorrow's houses have their own shepherds, argonians that stand rigid and motionless on the logs. They look for all the world like just one more floating tree.

The stone city sits aloof from all that, built on bedrock shot through with two thousand years of Welkynd moonlight. That's the city that they call Imperial, as opposed to Cyrodiil's city. Us CiCi's belong to a place that is less occupied with absorbing the wealth of Tamriel and the magicka of the cosmos than in trading pestilence with the waters of the Niben. Even while Galenus' wealth lasted, we lived in the apartments above his commercial headquarters on the waterfront. With a benefactor worth three millions, I still lived on the fill, not the bedrock.

So snap out of it, Naleva, and realize that even if this boat gets caught up in the current and swirls around like a Falinesti horn top, you'll see only the most unrealistically flattering view of home. You don't live anywhere near those towers. The people that do are swirling powdered tiger claw into their century-old Skingrad, reading your file and signing lives away into exile. And remember, you might have left the city soon anyways, had they not charged you with the sacred duty of returning as soon as possible, just to spite them.

But I said this leg of the journey was the worst. That's because the minders knew that I was still on home turf and were paranoid about escape. I swear the manacles got tighter every mile, and so did the feeling of being uprooted. The road to central Morrowind, of course, goes straight past Cheydinhal. It climbs up away from the humid lakeshore and rice plantations, along the ridge that overlooks the Nibenay Basin's mangroves and swollen rivers. From there, it's a steep ascent and sharp hook through the gap they renamed Septim's Gate Pass. It's a victorious name, meant to wash away the memory of all the blood it cost Reman the Last to batter his way through.

These were not fortuitous circumstances for revisiting the highlands where I was born. To be perfectly honest with my gentle readers, getting a last glimpse of all those places I imagined I remembered convinced me of the tragic nature of my situation. I wasn't right in the head. I may have been weepy.

Rest assured that subsequent years have provided perspective. Those wooded hills I mourned over then are nothing more than the campgrounds where an eccentric millionaire practiced his bizarre ideas of public service with a gaggle of roving orphans, deflowering an awkward half-Dunmer along the way. As for the city, the prominence of garbage in my description should speak volumes. Cyrodiil was a lifetime ago.


	3. Chapter 3

I wanted to do this straight. I'm not sure how well that's going.

A friend of mine, with whom I have a complicated relationship that stretches back a millennium or so, once taught me a lot about truth, and how it's often not quite the thing. He's right, but it doesn't sit that well with me. So I'll take an alternate inspiration from the fellow, because the main thing about him is that he's more divided in half than I'll ever be. He's living (last I saw) proof that you can have it both ways.

You should some sort of an idea how things work around here by now. I'll try to write half the time like a good memoir, one for the chroniclers, to please a female friend of mine (with whom I have an equally-complicated relationship). But now I really have to shrug her off and write like Naleva. This is her now, in case you were wondering.

So. Seyda Neen. So difficult to get this one right.

.

.

.

You look like shit. That's because

_**they have taken you from the Imperial City's prison,**_  
><em><strong>first by carriage,<strong>_ from which you didn't bother to escape

_**and now by boat. To the east, **_

_**to Morrowind**_ if you weren't paying attention.  
><em>Fear not,<em> piss yourself no longer, _**for I am watchful,**_  
><em><strong>you have been chosen<strong>_ by a bald freak with bugs for a beard

.

.

.

The ship wakes me.

The hawser scrapes along swollen planks, a fingerswidth away on the opposite side of the hull. A final clunk as we are warped into port, and I'm still down in the dark underwater. Somehow I have been made aware of all this activity while asleep (dreaming, as the singular specimen across from me would have it). Half a lifetime on the waterfront leeches this awareness into your marrow like salt, and the smell never entirely fades.

Away with the cobwebs in the eyes and the jutting pains in my back. Everything I'm wearing is damp. Slimy and clinging, I feel my prison garments melding with the vessel's ancient, teeming bones. Need to get up, wake up, and clear my thoughts, especially as we've—

"—reached Morrowind. I'm sure they'll let us go."

Yes, that's what the fellow across from me said. Focus on him; it's worth the look. Milords and ladies, may I present to you a true grit-in-the-throat Velothi. He has the real Dunmer skin, deep slate and mottled. Nourished by the motherland's harshness, it has none of the sickly, bluish quality of the CiCi ashborn. But most of all it's the voice, that wasted rasp that puts the cruelty of those red eyes in their proper place. My own are dislocated, outraged and orphaned by the discordant snip-snip-slap of the Polefel dialect.

Full disclosure. I'm writing this, well, _now_, when what you know will happen has already happened. So some of who I am today (a foreign object, all told) may rob off on who I was at Seyda Neen. I've just called myself out, and will try to be more true to my thoughts as they were in those days. Rest assured, the above was _not _my reaction to that Dunmer, the second-to-last prisoner on the the boat.

"Quiet. Here comes a guard."

And so he does. My, but the Imperial kit is ragged out here. Cheap, ready and functional, but ragged. As only I am summoned, I rouse myself and trot forward out of the forepeak. Hammocks are being stowed on either side of us, by seamen scarcely less ratty than myself. What was the bit about sailors in the verse Galenus taught us? _Hands of horn and soles of silk._

We haven't actually seen Vvardenfell yet. Although two nights ago, thrashing about hove-to in the squalls, we did see several hundred pounds of it airborne. A great part of the mountain's ash gets sucked up into Nirn's upper reaches, flowing overhead like a red river. Once it all gets over water, the stuff tends to sink down to sea level, and the crew spent four hours sweeping and scrubbing volcanic crystals from the decks. I've heard all about the ashlands, but the ship's Nord cook assured me that Red Mountain hasn't blanketed the entire island for many generations now. Some coastal areas are skipped over by the high altitude discharge, and I may even see green grass.

New air downfloods through the hatch, a strange consistency to it. It's not quite a scent, but a volume. It has body. Three drops of water fall from the brailed sails above my head, some sort of native Dunmer rig. And then it's up and out and topsides.

Right, _now_ the air has a scent. Seyda Neen smells green and damp. I hear friendly words of direction from a Redguard soldier off to the right, but am blinded by the sun that passes so strangely through this haze. Less friendly instructions now; I stumble down the ramp before my vision clears. On a dock, one of very few docks. Gods, have I ever seen a port this small? An incongruously Colovian structure with thatched roof sits athwart the exit to the pier, and there is something immense with too many legs off to my right. As the legionary steers me towards the entrance, I realize that the surrounding swamp, with its creaky, moss-hung trees, isn't too different from the southern parts of Nibenay.

This next part is just paper work, standing (and stinking) before an impeccably-groomed old bureaucrat in the warmly furnished Census and Excise office. He was most insistent on verifying my birthsign. Fine, then. The Serpent, Dragon Rising. And then some awkward questions about martial training (if any). He seemed strangely expectant, and I thought it wise to clam up. Finally, something to sign (of course), and mention of a release fee to prick my ears up.

They shuttle me through a few more rooms, which are probably left befouled with bilge scent. This is a real backwater outfit, nothing like the institutions of overawing Imperial bombast that a CiCi like me is used to. That said, being sat down on a stool across from a Legion officer in full armor has a certain sobering effect no matter the rusticity of one's surroundings.

Only this one introduces himself. Sellus Gravius.

"Naleva S? Welcome to Vvardenfell. Let me see your identification papers and we shall try to sort all this out."

He scrutinizes the certificate that the bureaucrat drew up in the other room. There's something tentative in the way he shuffles papers around, and a certain familiarity in his manner.

"We were notified of your arrival on extremely short notice. Yesterday, in fact." He looks down at the papers and up at my clothes, consternation on his face. Could Crew Cut here think that I am something other than a prisoner?

"I assume the papers are in order?" So hard to adopt an imperious tone when your throat is dry.

"Yes, quite. Although there is a letter which preceded you and the language is..." He smiled faintly. "You know the Empire. Let not the left hand know what the right hand is doing."

What a positively Colovian expression. I crossed my arms by way of response.

"But rest assured, I recognize that your case has been expedited by the highest authority." He gestured at a stamped crest with something like reverence. "It appears I should simply convey what instructions have reached us."

"If you please."

From the desk appeared a small package wrapped in animal skin and twine.

"You are to deliver this coded communique to one Caius Cosades, and report to him for further orders. Were you briefed on Cosades?"

"Regrettably not."

"Typical. He lives in the county seat, Balmora. Not the easiest man to track down, but apparently he trusts the guides at a local bar with his whereabouts. Ask for him at the South Wall Cornerclub. I don't know Balmora well, but the bar sounds like the working class district on the east side of the river. Is that all clear?"

"Yes," I lied. Forget explanations, the one hand clearly knew nothing of the other's doings, and it could mean freedom to me.

"Right, then. Best of luck carrying out your charge." He stood, armor creaking and rasping upright along with him. "The coinpurse there is also at your disposal. 'The Empire is Law...'"

"'And the Law is sacred,'" I dully completed the valediction, trying not to pounce on the money. A final stiff nod and the torturous ouroboros of Imperial bureaucracy spat me out into the street a free mer, blinking in the strange breeze.

First of all, to stuff the coinpurse somewhere. Not everyone can hide heavy metal objects in their bosoms, so tuck in the shirt and cradle around the waistband. I've neither a pocket nor a bag, and everything I'm wearing makes my skin crawl.

It wasn't necessary, but old habits die hard, and I tucked myself away in the nearest alcove to count the drakes. Half the people I saw on the way weren't Dunmer, or even in foreign dress. With mossy stone walls on either side of me, the place seemed even more Colovian. Sure, there was some sort of three legged toad with a dorsal fin surfing around in the puddle there, but...

Eightyish septims. It's probably more than has ever been handed to me all at once, much less from the Empire, but I'm a grown girl now. It will vanish in days. If I don't find some sort of nook for myself on this island, a sugared-up khajiit will be ripping through my nethers by Tirdas, and paying the non-guild rate.

The transplanted western houses peter out pretty quick. There's a smaller bay littered with idle fishing craft, a precarious jumble of a lighthouse, and a short slope down to the real swamplands. Miserable-looking Dunmer shacks all over the place down there, the dark twigs in their walls seemingly held together by rot and rot alone. It's where I'll end up sleeping if something doesn't come my way.

I find the tradehouse by feel, perhaps drawn to it by the cliffracers (gods know what I thought they were then) that circled around its soaring chimney. A wooden deck leads to the entrance, overlooking a more native-looking market and the slum by the bay. It's an Altmer at the tradehouse's main booth, and the thought of one of those Cyrodicized swindlers holding court here is oddly comforting. The place looks like an entrepot for desirable imports and choice Vvardenfell goods, possibly whatever Census and Excise is skimming off the top. Most of it's out of my price range and I hear the sounds of a bar from upstairs. Turns out, what I want most in the world right now is to not be wearing these clothes and to scrub off a good three layers of this skin. Thank Zenni I cut most of my hair off last month. The second-floor tavern is morose, if fairly well attended for mid-morning. Approach the barkeep, who looks pretty and severe the way only Redguards can.

"Do you have a room for let?" She casts a jealous glance at the single door in the corner, not wanting to acknowledge me. Taking her grimace for affirmation, I retrieve a few coins (an awkward operation if ever there was one) and ask if there is a wash basin in the room.

"Not quite. We do things native fashion around here these days."

"And that means... no water?" At least the gold gets me a response.

"Aye. What do you want the room for?"

"Tell me how to get to Balmora and I'll let you know." Now I get a look that says 'you poor dear.' No less suspicion, though. I show her the size of the coinpurse and it doesn't go well with my garments.

"You must have swam here, girlie. Tell you what, my sujamma shipment comes in by strider in a few hours. Meet it at the port and maybe you will be first in line to tag along with Adosi. Shouldn't cost you much."

"And might I rent the room until then?"

"Have it for eight, but only if you don't go near the bed. I'd go into debt to washerwomen."

A skeletal Dunmer child appeared with the key, and I took a mug of shein with me. It turned out like ricewine with an aftertaste. There was a bucket on the floor of the room, which was all I really needed. I slung the handle across my wrist, handed back the key and set off for the market.

The circle of stalls wasn't large, but in retrospect, that made it worse. Here is where it all caught up to me, and I almost ran away. Knots in my throat, I paced up and down the row of vendors at least twice, willing none of them to recognize my indecision.

_I thought you were from the city, damnit. What wide-eyed sheep-bumping rot is all this, then? Just get what you need._

I really did think I was better than this. I practically grew up in a market, teeming with stranger merchants than this, with everything unknown and treacherous mere sport for a gutterwise CiCi. But the city was a swirling hive of everything, where no one could lay claim to you or the ground you trod on. This was a _place_, and it had rules and senses and thoughts and goddamn guardian spirits that did not want me there at all. It turns out, there is nothing more terrible on this earth than having to buy new clothes at an alien marketplace. Petrified of eye contact with the vendors, you have mere seconds to assess each item. Who can tell you what choice will betray your ignorance, your helplessness? Will the breeches most like your Cyrodilic garb mark you down for the wrong religion, or the other gender?

Finally I chose a nondescript tunic and leggings, and felt the strange weave of the fabric as I tucked it under my arm. After that some imported half boots, kicking my old shoes into a pool of dense green algae. I wasn't able to haggle for any of it, and gods know what the markup for speaking Cyrodilic was. Lastly, not knowing what else to use for a washcloth, I bought a circular piece of copper-colored fabric. I now know that it was one piece of prayer quilt, which explains the price and the acrid look I got for purchasing it. A harried-looking wood elf directed me to the village well, which tapped into a spring halfway up the outcropping that overlooked the docks.

On the way to draw water, of course, I got a look at the strider port. You can imagine what bricks were shat, and this wasn't even one of the ashlands species that has more legs. No amount of stories about giant bug-crabs can actually get the concept fully into your mind ahead of time. I've also found that no length of time spent off the island will get their rumbling, soulful calls out of your ears.

Things get easier from here. I bring the bucket back to my room, slopping half of it onto the ground as I walk down the hill. Another costly expenditure for Nibenean soap (don't risk it with the native stuff), and I can finally strip, washing up after a fashion. The main thing is that I never have to touch my prison clothes again. For all I know those rags are still balled up underneath the bed in Arilles' only room. Having found my appetite again, the barkeep didn't gouge me for a loaf of bread. The last purchase on the way to the strider port was a penknife. Blade was only as long as my little finger, but that's all it takes.


	4. Chapter 4

The further inland you go on the Bitter Coast, the more the air thickens. Nowadays, when swamp fever is no longer a concern for me, and I've developed an affinity for mud and insects (their absences signals something much worse on this island), the region has a sort of languid appeal. Took me two months to get used to just the atmosphere, though, so you can imagine how I was on day one.

Forty feet up in the strider, however (it is hard to recall the time when stepping inside a carapace was novel), our heads would break out into clearer air from time to time. There was never a moment when the trees—which I didn't know Vvardenfell had—did not loom above us, thrusting into the compartment with their sticky canopy leaves. I think it's the trees that rarify the air so, because I would catch a whiff of crisp sea breeze only when our mount loped into the occasional open patch.

My mahout is Adosi Ahaz. Had I heard his name today, I would have been able to pick him out as a former ashlander. He took a very few coins for the trip because no one ever lines up for Hla Oad, wherever that is. Oh right, so this means I am walking to Balmora, for all but the swampy portion of the trip. I'm told I can make it before midnight (in a highly doubtful tone), but only if I buy some of his scrib jerky.

Adosi is silent for long periods of time, until that flinty head of his arrives at some thought it deems important. For roughly half an hour he stood at the controls and carried out a covert interrogation with a few innocuous questions and glances. Left hand on a severed tendon and right index finger intertwined with the strider's nerve column, the matter of my heritage came up. Seeing me struggle with the question of whether I was 'Velothi,' Ahaz rephrased.

"Are you Dunmer?"

That really didn't get any closer to the problem. As a last resort, the mahout retrieved his guardian, the small vial of grave dust that everyone here carries around their neck. This invitation for an ancestor potluck evoked only a quizzical stare, and Adosi tucked the container back into his shirt with a stately nod. Question definitively answered.

For the benefit of other Westerners and milkskins (honorary or otherwise), I will sketch out this insect here. The cockpit is surprisingly spacious, a hollow compartment seemingly bitten into the strider's shell. Or rather, it's spacious when you are riding in style, and not perched atop several hundredweight in bulk goods. That day, I squatted on sacks of saltrice, and even the slow easy lurch of our progress made the edge of the cockpit wink at me menacingly. I could wedge myself into the aft quarter of the compartment, down below the heaps of supplies where an uneven bound could not threaten to roll me overboard. That meant, however, squeezing up against the interior wall of the shell, which glistened in a fleshy sort of way and gave off a powerful scent. Adosi would also glare at me whenever I stepped off the thick canvas 'rug' that protects the strider's sensitive dorsal areas from the dusty boots of passengers. So I grabbed the heaviest, most expensive object available and clung to it, satisfied that if the beast pitched me to my death, I would take something dear with me. I've ridden a lot of striders since then, and become accustomed to the more refined mounts with cushioned cockpits, tea and hackle-lo near at hand. At the moment, however, I watched the landscape undulate past on edge.

Speaking of landscape, it's starting to rise. The strider's movement changes entirely on an incline, as it's legs undergo contorted movements that are difficult to discern from my vantage. Dear crabbie here can climb like a Valenwood ape, but you couldn't call him graceful when doing anything other than, well, striding.

"We have turned north, off the coast, Naleva." He is clearly uncomfortable addressing me by just one name, as if he just looked up my skirt.

"Oh?"

"I will let you down soon, so listen closely. I take the route along the green strip by the water, and cross the Odai at its mouth to reach Hla Oad. This is out of your way, however. You should cut through the hills ahead of us, then find the bridge across the river. After that, it is a straight walk north to Balmora, with no wrong turnings. Thirty miles, maybe more."

And there were hills ahead of us now, lumpy grey shapes emerging from the haze. The road beneath us ran right through a narrow gap, a definite entrance flanked by two enormous stone obelisks half again as tall as the strider. Something stirred in my gut when I saw them, and I don't think I'm making that up. Morrowind.

"Up there, eh?"

"Truly. There Foyada Mamaea piles up on itself, never reaching the sea. It's high enough that the mountain winds brush the top: the only ash waste in these parts."

"Ash w—wait just a minute!"

"Milady, no need to worry. The plateau is mere miles across. You are not dressed for ashland, true, but in this daylight, simply keep an eye on the northern sky, and you will be able to cross in safety. It is worth your while to shorten the trip."

I bite my lip and watch the twin pillars bob towards us. Adosi sees the leaf-wrapped package of scrib jerky cradled in my lap.

"Eat now, Naleva. Come nightfall, there is an egg mine on the river, and they are ever anxious to sell at market price."

What do you suppose are the odds I will be able to stomach whatever that is?

"Now clap on to something. We descend."

A complicated series of surgical interventions in the strider's nervous system and the cockpit loses all stability. Our mount calls out to the ashlands and its shell around me vibrates, strumming like a lute. The stone pillar rise higher above us as the strider pitches fore and aft in the manner of a falling leaf.

"Climb out and down the middle leg, milady." The dark chitin tree trunks holding us up are splayed out to either side now, half folded up on themselves. If I fall, it's only fifteen feet or so. Hell with this, just imagine that it's a drainpipe or a rafter, and you're fifteen again. Looks a lot slipperier than a drainpipe, though, and with little thorn-like pimples sticking out.

"Many thanks, Adosi Ahaz. Any tips for me?"

"Simply walk straight on from the pillars until you see water, and avoid the hills and the racers."

"How likely am I to actually make it?"

"Pay the vista no mind. You shall be quite safe. If you wake tomorrow with black crust in the corners of your eyes, see the healer to cure you of Blight. But that is not so likely this far south, even these days."

"What confidence you instill. Fair travels, your bug and you." Swinging out and sliding down the outstretched leg is easier than expected, although Cosades' package slips off my belt on the way.

"May ancestors find you," Adosi calls. I have never since heard what I took for his customary farewell.

Coarse sand shifts under my feet, and I back away to wait for the strider to rise up again. Watching them move from down below is a different experience entirely, one I won't attempt to reduce to paper. The sound of their footfalls does not carry far, and in seconds I am alone with this island and its silence.

There is a definite threshhold between the stone monoliths, which are twice the size down here. One step between their massive foundations and everything dies. Grey, grey, grey. A dozen and a half shades of it, with great boulders tinted in green and and beggarly plants reflecting purple in their jealous, desiccated roots. One really has to see it to comprehend any of this, but the plants are simple and scarce enough. Trama, scathecraw, firefern, not much else. And every illustration has those pillars that are everywhere. They even build replicas for the conquest anniversary parades. What's most striking are those skeletal trees, the remainders of this land's fickleness. There were greyer times here once, when the ash fell nightly on Vivec, and greener ones as well. Nothing grows on the ridges. Anything that sticks up into the path of Red Mountain's currents gets blasted, scoured and scraped clean until there's nothing but baer rock. The cliffracers can stand it, hovering there in all weather, but nothing else does. When you get flatter places between hills, then you have ashland.

And that is where I walk, through a light, smoky breeze. The air is crisp now, it flows sharply across my tongue. Everything around me is hard and edged and clear, a world poised to wait out my brief window of ease and deliver harsh judgment upon this interloper. The cliffracers hover in every direction above me, the crowd jeering a prisoner condemned to the arena. I don't associate them with the ashlands, however. They are a touch too ridiculous, naught but frivolous airborne rats in a place too severe for them.

Not so long now after passing between those toothy stone gates and the plateau widens. The bleak ridges diverge, letting the wastes open up before me. It's a long, slow descent from here, a gentle grade of dim shapes and unsteady footing. I'm walking beneath a mountain wind, so the sky a half mile above me has darkened with blowing smoke, shedding this grey light upon us. When your stinging eyes probe the shifting curtains of a Vvardenfell haze in the ashlands, there's a very particular effect. It is a moment, a landscape tinged with a deep, brooding purple, although there is truly nothing of that color here. I pass by a broken cleft that hides a cave, and come across the ashmires. The bubbling, musty scent reached me first, but I disregarded it until the first of the terraced pools came into view.

If ebony is godsblood. Ashmire muck is his vomit. Its being a less lofty fluid in no way diminishes the substance's usefulness to the tribes, who resort to the heat of the churning black slime when no fuel can be had. They use it to cure hides for clothing and armor and yurt, while the wisewomen filter it to make balms. Most of all, bathing in a pool of Vvardenfell's bubbling intestinal ooze will coat the skin in a gritty layer that protects against the abrasive and infectious blasts of a blight storm.

But I didn't know that then. Instead the great sweep of what lay ahead washed me over with dread. I cannot tell what it was exactly; after all, I could see my destination in the distance. At the bottom of the great slope, the glittering silver ribbon of the River Odai reflected sunlight in a well of haze. Yet something about this first exposure of the land impressed on me horribly. It was beautiful, in a way, and awful and crushing. On I had to go, through the ashmires, those dozens and scores of little round pool, each raised up on a dais of sedimentized ooze. They were set into the incline ringed by fringes of scarethaw like the the hairy black nipples of an orc. The only time I've seen a cliffracer land is either or to suckle at them or to die.

I know I thought that night had fallen, picking my way through that clouded, earth-heated morass. On occasion, Cosades' package bumped at my side, but the weight and presence of my surroundings otherwise steered my mind way from such concerns. The ashlands did not swallow me up (although I nearly fled from the thumping of scribs, till I saw their size and visage), and the sun was shining somewhere, somewhere just up ahead.

This has gone on long enough. I'll leave out the moment when I turned slightly left to find the sun, some happy tears and a bridge across the Odai. And how the many miles after that—first through silent rocky scrubland and then the fertile valley of green(!) trees and emperor parasols—were so very short by comparison. I bought Kwama eggs from a redguard miner, whose appearance was as welcome as the sun itself, tasted disgust and relief in their thick yokes, and reached Balmora by nightfall.


	5. Chapter 5

Balmora deserves and introduction, for what it was to me then and perhaps remains now. But it's not going to get one from me, as I've been badly failing my charge not to be retrospective.

.

Scratch that. I wrote it the honest way, and it didn't work out. Despite what you may have noticed is my prodigious memory, the moment has fled somewhere deep and cobwebby and past. Whatever happened that night, it can't be dredged back up. So with a thousand pardons (or am I the only soul who cares?), I will resort to the phenomenon of Balmora in the daytime.

.

Start with a dull iron horseshoe. Dip it in the boiling blood of a slaughtered rebel, an eviscerated scarab, our resident slain god. Now that it glows red-hot, it is soft and malleable and reeks of dangerous freedom. Stand it on end and hammer down on it from above, until the horseshoe flattens out into a longer, gentler shape. Now a stretched letter U, a Velothi boatman's hat inverted, a cleft between hills and a volcanic valley. Float a river through this space, stone the banks into coffee-colored walls and put your city on either side. But not quite yet.

First there is the meteoric bluff (upon whose stooping foothill you will build your acropolis) glowering over it all at the northern corner. The mountain above is a single piece of rock, a surge of stilled fire that catches the mountain wind. Cries of racers dwelling there remind the happy Hlaalu in the bazaars what manner of land this really is, short miles from all such sanctuaries of flowing water and crab grass. It is not a large mountain, nor truly anything more than a great boulder, and the whole valley appears deceptively small from any vantage. Leave it to the city to fill up that space and fold it upon itself sixteen times until it becomes larger. Likewise, the hills that bound the low spaces seem sheer from afar, but only on the western side do they approach the steepness of a foyada. Though they are studded with tall outcroppings like corprus cysts, the hills flatten out before your feet as you approach.

I still have yet to come to the city itself. There is the smooth vertical ululation of the walls, a straight line without crenels or gates from where they arc over the river, to the guardtowers where the eastern ridge begins. Only the valley entrances are fortified; the hillsides are left to the terraces of Dunmeri dwellings with roofs like loaves of bread.

Immediately, the impression is of a warren. A native warren at that, despite the wide, irregularly-shaped plaza at the south entrances ringed by orderly shops and imperial guilds. At some point in my travels I had occasion to glance at the census of 3E 425, and Balmora is full of outlanders by any standard, yet this somehow does not factor into the the faces seen in the streets. From the strider port at the gate to the similarly long-legged bonemold automatons strutting about the main thoroughfares, Balmora is a Velothi town, absolutely teeming with life.

What did I see, those first days? A Telvanni baron in his bug armor, crippled and knotted by the sorcerous carapace that preserved him into his ruinous, unnatural old age. A betty netch hung with banners from its neutered tentacles, while her handler sang the praises of the southeast wind. Small children, their lips green with hackle-lo, leaping into the river with tiny skiffs hung over their heads like the webs of flying spiders. A procession of bricklayers and weavers on the way to hightown to present a petition to the Hlaalu. Off-duty legionaries in tan tunics and bracers devouring the cobbles with long striders, on their way past khajiiti street magicians armed with cantrips.

But Balmora is not a warren. True, both banks possess a definite residential interior, with a confusion of awnings, clogged markets, drainage ways, street-bridges, sudden steps and stoney dead-ends, yet the layout is essentially rational. Like the Bitter Coast, the city is a presence in the air, yet here the effect comes from a great noise, expressed in jocular Odai dialect, reverberating from the lattice of of indestructible Vvardenfell mudbrick all about you.

In truth, this description is not too dishonest, for I experienced it all promptly, the morning after I collapsed exhausted into a bed I paid too much for, at a Breton-run inn. I wandered the streets for a while, gnawing on scuttle and jangling the few coins in my pocket. Logically, I knew that I was no more welcome here than at Seyda Neen, but I threaded my way through the ash-faced throng with something like joy anyhow. It was a place I could get the tiniest purchase on, for no city can be entirely strange to a CiCi. I walked with a pleasure that overlaid the sense of churning doom in my gut, for if I did not make good on my inexplicable government contact here, starvation was fast approaching. Starvation, or the far-worse gambit to stave it off. Perhaps it took me a moment to turn over the proverbial moth wing, and read my fate.

Loth to speak to anyone and betray my foreign tongue (though the sheer variety in the Dunmeri faces on display put me at ease about my ambiguous appearance somewhat), I found my own way to the the South Wall Cornerclub.

Open the door to the club (just a bar, really), and immediately I get a sharp look from a Nord in an earth-colored robe. This place isn't like any tavern I've seen, just a corridor heading down some stairs. I suppose it's my first real Vvardenfell building, with all the life happening underground. Several characters on the way. An armored khajiit smelling of the sugar, a wizened bosmer of uncertain gender. At the end of the hall, it opens out into a festively-furnished tavern, with a Western-style counter and sumptuously dressed Illiac barman. I order a drink and make eye contact with this sort of mage-looking lizard on the stool next to me. For some reason I find it easy to talk to Argonians, as if their not truly fitting in anywhere makes the social bridges quicker to cross. They do always insist on introductions, though, and this fellow has quite the handle.

"So then, Only-He-Stands-There, do you know of a Caius Cosades? I heard I could find him here."

"Here? Here he is not often to be found." The Argonian turns and hisses at the barkeeper. "Rielle! When's the last time you heard tell of that old sugartooth Cosades?"

Sugartooth?

"Cosades? I couldn't rightly say. Who wants to know?"

"That'd be me," I pipe up. "I have to meet him and conduct some business."

"Business? You have _business_ with Caius Cosades?" Whoreson of Hircine, he has to bellow that just as the drums in the corner hit a lull. I miss Cyrodiil where tavernkeepers are discrete. This one guffaws. "You _are_ at the South Wall, but still, I admire your brazenness. Fear not, none of the shell-heads shall hear of your 'business' from us. I should hope."

The patrons are looking at us now. Damnit. I drain my glass.

"Caius hasn't graced our establishment in a fortnight or so, but he's an easy enough man to find. Tends to stay holed up in a bed-and-basket on the north side of town. Northeast, that is. How are you with directions?"

"Never had a problem in that department."

"Fine then. Take a right out the door and keep on until you get to the highest street on this side of the river. I don't mean the slum terraces, I mean the highest main street that runs straight across, clear to the north wall. Right? Cosades' house is fairly easy to spot, because it's exactly at the end of that street. If you just kept walking, you'd walk straight into it."

"And the door knocker is brass, shaped like ram's head," offers a nearby khajiit in a blouse.

"My thanks. Fair day to all." I pay for the drink and try to ignore the quizzical glances that have made their way around the room like contagion. Heading back up towards the street, I mentally catalog the possibilities. Maybe, the Imperials gave Sellus Gravius the wrong names. Maybe, they are too lazy to deliver their own notices of tax arrears. Or else the Empire has cast off its obsession with legality and is sending their prisoners to work for drug-addled pimps as a cruel joke. That last holds my suspicions for the longest period of time, at around eight seconds. By the time I reach ground level, I'm out of answers and can only go forward. Cosades' "bread-and-basket" (all this time later and I still have not heard this term again) is clear across town. For the first five minutes, I clutch his package to myself like a frightened child.

It is far less crowded up here on the side of the hill, and the foot traffic has fallen into the danger zone where a curious-looking outlander is conspicuous and interesting. The border ridge is passing by to my right, two stories up. Judging by the sparse grass and gray surface, the peak catches some ash every now and then. The mental impact of the wastes has worn off already, after my march through mundane Oblivion, and the bare slopes look like a good refuge if this city becomes suddenly hostile. I learned as a CiCi (though never firsthand) that you always think you can sleep in an alleyway, just for one night. You can't.

The house stands at the end of the dirt street, blocking passage to the walls just as the publican said it would. Like its neighbors, the front has only the one small window, made of green translucent resin That makes it easy to approach. And I believe that then, I dragged my fingers across the rough, crumbling surface of the wall, tracing an uncertain path towards the door. At least, that is what I did before every subsequent visit, when in the months ahead I dashed to and from that flaking, warped front door with all possible speed.

In that moment so long ago, yet situated squarely in the present compared to the other past I've lived, Naleva touched down on the brass knocker. Its stained, yellowy bulk was the primary detail setting Cosades' dwelling apart from the others, and verifying my choice of address. And yet, no answer. Dibby's Cooch, that won't do! No answer is the end of me. Knock again, and hear a grating cough from the far side. Was that a summons? It will have to suffice. Lean in on the door.

It swings open through the meek rattle of a broken latch. Hell of deadbolt there, though. The sun is shining in that filtered, whitened Vvardenfell sort of way, and through a blue sky full of puffy clouds, but little of it brightens this interior. Out of the darkness comes the acrid sweetness of moonsugar, waves of it beading sweat on your nose and bursting saliva from your gums. A point of light in the opposite corner winks out as soon as my eyes can catch it.

"Hello?" I call.

Nothing but another cough, and the shifting sound of someone definitely awake. The interior shutters are all closed, but now I can see the outline of bedposts.

"Cosades?"

Shit! That noise is the slow winding of a crossbow. Backpedaling towards the door...

"I have a message from Seyda Need! They sent me to you."

The loading stops with a tert click. I brandish the package.

"Here, damnit! Do you want it?" No answer fast enough. I dig in with my nails and rip open the taught fabric, simultaneously kicking open the door. In the renewed sunlight, we can both see the contents, a series of sewn pages covered in a mass of nonsensical characters. Is this actually a joke after all?

Clunk.

In the light from the entranceway I can see that the crossbow has been set on a round table. By the Divines, it was loaded with a _fork._

A sallow, soft-edged voice, clearly Colovian.

"Leave the package. And come back at sunset, if you've further business."

Not a chance I'll play my part and let this shadowy sugartooth leave me out in the cold. I am out the door in a single motion, the ciphered documents clenched in my fist.


	6. Chapter 6

Of course, I'm not ten paces down the road before I know that I'll be back at sunset. Whoever this fellow is, he and his bosses owe me my life on this island, and he _will_ deal with me. The documents in the package are printed on thick, official-looking sheets of paper, but they are nothing I can pawn, though the South Wall seems a likely place for that sort of thing. Furthermore, this mess of code—which I try to conceal from passerby in futile paranoia—means danger. I'll get back to Cosades if I have to kick his door down, but there is probably a steep price to pay for any other games played with the imperials here. Maybe he just needs to sober up, because the dozen words I heard came from a head that was pretty clearly well-baked. And the fork crossbow? After my illegal deportation and continental crossing, I had not imagined that the Empire could grow so inscrutably lower in my estimation.

Well, I had enough money left for a noon meal. I walked west down the steps, following the wall so as not to get lost. Best not to return to the corner club. From the two weeks I spent as professional thief (tell you about that some other time), I knew the sort that gathered there.

Back across the river, then, catwalking on the bridge's thick railing to avoid a small convoy's worth of pack guar.

Oh, right. Sorry, a convoy's worth of what-in-Kynnie's-name-are-those-nearly-fall-in-the-river-from-staring-beasts. They have a (fat) dragon's legs and tail, with the bulbous, oversized smiling head from the whale preserved in the Skyrim hall of the Imperial Exposition. Their amiable wrinkled eyes and chicken-leg arms make the guar an endearing animal until you approach within the twenty-foot radius of their stench. And I have seen a rutting bull kill a would-be rustler with a single devastating kick.

I continued on uphill, towards the mansions and official buildings of hightown, shadowed in their twin guardtowers. Just past the river where the north wall stops, the monk accosted me. The monk or the Tribunal equivalent, that is. Even now I am not entirely educated on the specificites of Temple offices.

"Alms! Alms for the servants of the Three! Alms and Mother's Mercy to the blighted faithful of Vos, the corprusent farmers of West Gash! For the benighted pilgrims before Mount Assarnibibi and their defence, and for the labor of the Living Ancestors and the kin-spirits that wail for our salvation in their Ghostfence!"

The ash-withered fossil with the expansive lungs paced up and down in his dusty robe, clutching a bonemold offering box while his white eyebrows danced. Seeing me walk past in solitude, he thrust the rounded receptacle before my chest and side-stepped along beside me, repeating his call with no change in volume.

I must have shrugged him off with too much irritation on my face, for he drew back and tucked his carapace beneath one arm, brows gathering like a storm.

"And who are you, heedless sister, to renounce the workers of ALMSIVI so shamelessly?"

"Ams...sivi?"

"Aye, the Living Ancestors, Promised of Veloth, Anticipated in the Waters Above, feared by the House of Troubles." He reached out with a pointing finger, stopping just short of my nose. "Mercy, Mystery, Mastery. Know the Three, sister, the spirits and thy lords." And he stroked my cheek with that one finger. I felt the ashlands on it.

"And are you my brother?" I asked. Good job facing down the frothers, Naleva. A lifetime of preparation in the spiritual madhouse of Tamriel has served you well.

"As are all the children of Veloth, we family of three spirits and the three gods of the deified generation. Surely you see this, sister? All the Dunmeri must." His voice was quieter now, so any spectators decided that the display was over. Somehow the zealous little fellow had steered me away from the street, to the shadowed wall of a bakery.

"But am I Dunmer?"

He favored me with a piercing, victorious look. His eyes were less red than most, seemingly studded with flecks of volcanic glass.

"Aha! Thusly I asked you from the first. 'Who are you,' to do as you have done? Who indeed?" Suddenly his hand was in mine, a prickly barbed thing with a light touch. "Come with me, sister, and I will answer your question for you."

And he was pulling me forward, up the stepped path to Balmora's unobtrusive Temple, its windowed dome and tusk-shaped courtyard walls.

"Fear not, milady. I feel the countenance of the Poet in you, and he holds strange admixtures in no ill light. Far from it! He delights in duality and contradiction."

The sparsely-populated Temple yard contained a font and little else. My wiry proselytizer dumped his container of drakes, resin crystals and glass shards into the font and, to my surprise, placed the collection box upon his head. Half a second's adjustment, and it became a wide-brimmed ceremonial helmet, entirely covering his face and hair.

"Now I shall be your guide and advocate. Follow me, sister...?"

"Naleva." Shocked how effortlessly he plied me for my name, and combated skepticism with curiosity.

"Enter then, Naleva, and we shall see if the spirits recognize you. Naleva. A good name." He held the door open.

Like many Vvardenfell temples, the interior was plain, even drab. Unlike, say, a Colovian chapel, most Dunmeri houses of worhsip do not attempt to convey a sense of the otherworldly in their architecture. Even for the natives, the otherworld is right here, in the Star-Wounded East, and the gods dwell here too, in the temporal palaces they built themselves. Except for ensconced candles and a large tapestry depicting Veloth's exodus, the walls of the temple were unadorned, the same ubiquitous brown earthen material as everywhere else. The place sported a metal dome, though, set around the base with little windows of real, Cyrodiil-style glass (although stained and frosted). Beneath this dome, like a reflection, sat the Soulpit, a round dais of bone-scattered grave dust. On the far side of that focal point, I could see three short altar-monoliths with their engravings, the priest on duty, and passageways to the more mundane rooms.

"Welcome, sister. It is not a long ritual, and will take but a minute."

The words were the same, but the voice changed inside the mask, becoming sonorous and laden with something. I noticed that the priest by the wall had bowed as we came in.

"Take up the brush," the conch-headed figure intoned, referring to a small iron rake lying on the side of the Soulpit. "Stir the ash."

I did so with incredulity, tracing seven parallel lines in the soot.

"Disinter your own beginnings as you do. Make yourself ready for the entrance of all forefathers."

Someone at whom I dared not look up at arrived with fragrant candles. The holyman standing at my back began throat-singing in Old Velothi, and the spine-tingling sounds echoed about the interior of the bonemold shell, flowing between its various chambers like the tide. The wavering hum of his voice swelled in strength, causing the pale surface of the carapace headpiece to vibrate. Finally he hit upon three great pounding high notes, and with each one, the Soulpit jumped. A thin film of silt popped into the air, scattered particles disassociating themselves from the rest as if the ground had been struck by a great shuddering weight. The sides of the dais, however, like the stones I knelt on, remained perfectly still.

"They are spoken!" my interlocutor exclaimed. "Do you feel them, sister?"

In perfect truth I experienced a chill that spread from my legs to the tips of my ears. There was also a chorus of sudden whispers, erupting from someplace without. The monk clapped his hands behind my head, and I turned in surprise, but when he made the sound two more times, it emanated from the mask. His hands never left his sides.

As I looked back, the grave dust stirred, as if it housed some sort of burrowing reptile. My interpreter pulled the helmet from his sweaty head and bent over the low dais with interest.

"Your ancestors do not lie here, Naleva, not since nineteen generations. The souls claim you, though, and direct you on, to where you must find your ageless earth. The progenitors of your line dwell on this sacred isle, in fact. See the jumbled bones."

He extended that finger of his toward a new arrangement of teeth and skull fragments, over where the ash had jolted.

"So that..."

"Is a sign of where to find your people, or at least the ever-living half." He smiled kindly. "Northeast, I should say."

"So my mother was from Vvardenfell..."

"A mother? Was it? No, a mother is a tiny little thing. A hallowed constellation stretching back across the ruin of time, yes, that was from Vvardenfell. So let us return to the original issue. Are you Dunmer? By these signs, yes, the spirits assure you. But can you in good conscience assign the name to yourself? This is doubtful. Seek your ancestors. Earn the right." He let the shell swing down to hang at his side. Another smile. "And when you do, think kindly of the three God Ancestors that still live, and brought you hence."

I stood, awkwardly.

"Is it expected to give alms? I have very little to offer."

"It is the thought, really."

Dropping a single coin into the container dangling beside him, I departed the temple in seven long, hurried steps.

.

.

.

Now I have something to chew on. And I'm hungry, too. Finding food at market is a task requiring a newcomer's full attention, however, and for a while the temple and its dirt quit my mind. Western bread is extremely expensive here (unless you know where to look), so after a careful process of selection I procure some porridge of ash yam and saltrice, with marshmerrow-sweetened tea. So there I am, sitting on one of Balmora's scores of stepped streets, sorting through my first enjoyable Vvardenfell meal and my first religious experience.

Or should I say, first divine experience, assuming that fellow wasn't a total charlatan. And I've had plenty of religious experiences, in the sense that religion is something that's done to you, rather than something you feel. Gallenus the heretic never took us to temple, although he deemed certain occasions suitably vague in their theology to match his private beliefs. And being that it was the City of the Thousand Cults, festivals were a regular occurrence, some boasting miracles that would hold the public imagination for several entire days.

And then here in a dusty corner of one of the Emperor's far-flung possessions, a pile of ash says that I'm home. And physically speaking, I suppose it's right. Normally when men and mer bear offspring, it is the mother's child, with but a few distinguishing marks from the father's people. Many a highborn imperial official was born of an Altmer handmaiden or governess in service to a Nibenese household, with no question of their elven racial identity. But I suppose my father's seed was just too much for a poor Dunmeri womb, dulling my ears and facial structure. Or perhaps the Bosmer in there threw off the recipe, upsetting the balance of my concoction with unexpected merishness.

Of course I have Dunmer ancestors, how could I not. But it remains strange to think that they could remain intact, 'alive' in the Velothi sense, whether animated, or in urns or ghost walls. And that the temple's spirits should recognize me, as if by word of mouth. How does that happen? Does some long-dead bureaucrat pen an astral letter and send it to the family plot by carrion fly? One thing I know, is that the Temple's Three didn't come up with all this. It is something essentially Velothi, and older than they are. The Triunes are pretty damn old, though, almost as old as the First Empire, and who the hell were the Cyrodils and CiCis before then?

Either way, this land's bones are willing to name me Dunmer while I doubt many of its people are. Though one of them does seem to think that I can try and qualify. Good to know that I can take that role in the future if needed, in a dishonest sort of way.

I set these thoughts in motion, meandering through the backstreets of the commercial district until I draw near the southern walls again. My tea is just finished as I hear the ripple of festive laughter from above me. There appears to be some sort of drinking establishment up a flight of stairs. Yes, the steps are set into the side of another cornerclub, its reddened windows keeping an eye on the strider port across the way. For whatever reason, I decide that from the roof of this Council Club, I can sit and drink and keep an eye on Cosades' place, despite the intervening distance.

Fling away the drinking gourd and its dregs, and on up to the roof with its tanin-colored awning and paper lanterns. I do my best native impression, but the laughter stops instantly as I set foot on the top step. It's a small group of Dunmer men and an Argonian slave (the first I've seen so far), all with mock-ashlander facial tattoos, mohawks and leather armor. There is an outdoor bar in the near corner, but they seem to be running it themselves, from the customer's side, for their own thirst. The one on the right scowls at me, but the rest just gaze, motionless figures exuding clouds of thickening hostility. Thunderstruck, all I can manage is an uneasy smile. Any CiCi walks into the wrong scene every now and then, but this is like nothing else. I spin on my heel and make the third quick exit of the day, passing another dark elf on the way down. He halts on a middle step to stare at me until I reach the corner, surprise and curiosity on his face. The lip of that damn roof follows me with daggers as I walk away, yet happily I turn right up on the doorstep of last night's inn. The Lucky Lockup, indeed.

Yes, I'm being careful with my money until I see how things turn out, but one drink won't be the difference between life and death. I've twenty drakes left, and spend a few of them on whatever the barman says is closest to Cyrodilic stuff. Comberry wine—shein—as I know it now.

There's an Argonian with maroon forehead spines sitting in the corner, tuning his lute (so happy to see that I have not left such scenes behind in the capital). Not long in a strange city and solitude becomes oppressive, so motion to join him.

"Welcome." A throaty rasp.

"A fine day to pass in here with the drink," I observe.

"I, Chuna, do not like quiet songs."

"You, ah, don't say."

"And songs I do not like, I do not often know to play, so do not ask. Please, that loud songs are strange, awkward to sing in such quiet places, for only one to appreciate."

"I, Naleva, hadn't thought to enlist your bardly services, merely to share your company. And besides, songs aren't everything. What does your professional wit have to offer on those Council Club types next door? Not the cheeriest sort."

A hiss. Would that I had the ability of an old Nibenese friend, who could interpret the full range of emotions and reactions in the Argonian hiss.

"There Chuna will never play, even when the Odai flows north and I am invited."

"Old fashioned types, are they? Not keen on the opening of immigration and Imperial settlement?"

"And not only. Quick of knife and short of mercy. A house with cruel eyes, home to only the Cammona Tong. Surprising that you set foot there."

"Set foot _on_ there, really." I blink. "Honestly, I thought that the Tong was just a Cyrodiil City outfit, immigrants and whatnot."

"Nonsense. They are from here, across generations of sugar and chains."

"How bright and sunny a day," remarks a smooth voice behind me," to be talking of the Tong."

"Good afternoon, Todwendy." Chuna bobs his scaly head to the Redguard woman who has drifted up to our table. "A song, perhaps?"

"He didn't want to play for me." My tone is flippant, watching this newcomer's lips shift into fascinating shapes as she flows downwards into a chair. I feel her leg occupy the space next to mind, but otherwise the process is silent.

"For this one I will perform," Chuna grinned. "So pretty, so pretty."

"Chuna, you _deviant._" She shoots him a brilliant expression. "But really, good weather is so boring. Darken the mood. For what do you and your guest discuss the Tong?"

"Naleva has been _their_ guest, and discovered their sour countenance."

Todwendy looks over at me for the first time, with her captivating face and bizarre Breton name.

"Not for any period of time, I hope!"

I manage to shake my head.

"All of them answer to the Ascadians, now," Chuna explains with satisfaction. "Those in the Isles have the land and connections to do business in this new imperial world, with its exports exciting... and troublesome."

"They are fixing up a war, Naleva. If you know any sweet young urchin boys who work for the Thieves Guild, tell them to book passage for Windhelm as fast as they can. It's cold there, but even colder in the grave."

Chuna nods in satisfaction at her words.

"A bloody time in the offing, yet one which will produce no fine songs. Unless you ensnare in a coil of forbidden love, the son Orvas Dren does not have have, my dear."

"Ech, I am soon gone from Morrowind and away from this tanglesome business." She shoots me a teasing glance, and I look down into my cup. "Were I to remain, it would be hard to ply my trade without indirect involvement with one group or the other. Independence is to be valued above all things."

"And yet with those words you sound so at home here," Chuna cackles.

Todwendy raps her nails in the tabletop.

"Do not speak to me of Dunmer chafing, so soon after another of those slaughters. This province will put aside it religious viciousness, or else I hope Uriel looks into his forefathers' ways to administer a true Cyrodilic beating on these dark elves."

"What slaughter?" I inquire.

"So she does speak after all! More killings by nativists. It is missionaries, usually, or new settlers. At least the imperial officials do _something _to deserve it, but it's rarely they who catch the knife. This last was in Gnisis."

"They say the Temple is behind it," Chuna rasps. "Indoril agents. Or rogue Telvanni. Or Redoran zealots."

"They always blame the Temple, and while I doubt the Tribbies are unduly dismayed by violence against outlanders, they have too much to lose by taking part. But the murders _are _religious. I wonder if it's not some new group entirely."

"This one, she is so clever. A song, my dear, a song for you."

"Not today, Chuna, I am not _that_ bored. And I have business up at hightown soon. The Hlaalu are never satisfied. Besides," she stands, favoring me with a wry smile," I don't think your friend here wants to talk to me very much."

"You see?" Chuna exclaims. "You drive away my muse! Now we will both need another drink."


	7. Chapter 7

Precious few drakes in pocket, the buzzing in my head just fading away. Dusk is setting fire to the particles of volcanic glass that hang in the air over hightown, a true Vvardenfell sunset. It's also time to go see Cosades again, with the mutilated package partially reconstructed from borrowed twine. Stepping down from the bridge now. Remember that the most likely reason for this mission is still a case of mistaken identity, your name scrawled on the wrong document. (Somehow the portentous business with the Moth Priest in the Lockbox had slipped from my considerations.) More than a fair chance, Cosades will want nothing to do with you. Righto then, Naleva, I'll sell his package to him for as much as I can and then screw off. To where? Oblivion, for all I know, but I'll have have some money's time to think it through, and I _will _have my money. Damned Empire of Cyrodiil has a debt coming in.

As I shuffle alongside the wall of Cosades' home, the sun has just kissed the top of the western ridge, blowing out the bottom of Magnus' smooth orb in a splatter of shifting rays. I'm mere paces from the door when I hear the slow scratching noise from above, like a boy whittling with a dull kitchen knife.

"Cosades!" I call up at the roof.

"Hmmn."

"Do you want this delivery, or not?" Let any eavesdroppers interpret that as they will.

An answer.

"You are a long ways from the City, you know. Come up here and have a seat for a while." Damn, this fellow knows his accents. Also, the voice bears no resemblance to that I heard earlier, besides coming from the same throat. More of that scratching as I head up the side stairs to the sitting area on the roof, and the sound of a small wooden object being set on a table.

"Good evening. You have something for me?"

A bare-chested baldpate, more at ease reclined amongst his Dunmeri furniture than I would have thought possible. He looks every bit the old soldier, with the set, stoic face of any number of the Emperor's generals. This one is a bit different, however. None of the pomp in him, severe, but lacking the air of a martinet. The eyes have it, arrestingly sharp, the sort for which the adjective 'flinty' was devised. _This_ is the old sugartooth?

"Two things for you, in fact. Out of Seyda Need this past day."

Cosades leans forward, a movement of exacting softness.

"I see. And what is your name, that they have sent you to find me."

"I'm Naleva... and Sellus Gravius sent me to you."

He glances briefly down at the street.

"Come. Let us do this indoors, despite the excellent sunset. And tell me, Naleva, what is your family name?"

"None in particular." Somehow, he gets ahead of me, to lead down the stairs.

"A Dunmer without a surname? I've never heard of such a thing as that."

"Well, that's just the thing, isn't it."

His house still smells of sugar, but there are lit candles and unshuttered windows now. The furnishings are barely adequate in the one-room hut, as if the rooftop area is just for show.

"You mentioned two things for me, Naleva. One, I see, an encoded missive which you defaced somewhat. A poor show for a courier. And the second—"

"—Is me, as I'm not a courier." He leans back on the table, closing his eyes momentarily. "They... repatriated me here, told me I'd be provided for. Just so long as I followed instructions. They told me to _report—_the very word—to you, with this package, and that you'd have more for me to do."

Cosades sighs and beings pulling a black linen shirt on over his head.

"Where are you from, Naleva?"

"From Nibennium, sir, you knew that."

"And what did you do there?"

"Why—I'm an orphan."

"You're too old to be an orphan, you know."

"Don't quite see how that works out."

"It's quite alright. Some of our best people are professional orphans."

Standing there in his entranceway is fast becoming uncomfortable.

"Tell you what, Naleva. I will have work for you tomorrow, or soon after. As my courier, say. There's money for an inn on the table. I will need to digest your correspondence there, if you'll allow me..." Somehow he gets me to hand over the package, and I'm stalled there with nothing else but his promise and the ten drakes on the tables. "I recommend the boarding house on the corner, two streets down. You'll have enough left over for a meal, then."

I fail to move.

"When should I come back?"

"Oh, first thing. I rise early on working days. Good evening, Naleva."

The way out is no more certain than the way in.

.

.

.

The third visit to Caius Cosades. I spent another night at the Lucky Lockup despite its relative expense. It's a fine establishment, smelling of home, and the name is an amusing take on my own experience of the last month. Besides, there was Chuna there to listen to, and Todwendy dropping by to give the weak drink a bit more of a kick. She would also share various adroit observations on the state of the province, like the recent politicized celebration of the Armistice and the furor it kicked off, or Great House competition and the Imperial mineral monopoly. I tried to steer the conversation that way, and clear of my own life, for discretion had been the unsaid word in Caius' brief sentences.

It was a rainy morning, and rain in Vvardenfell sounds like metal beads shattering on the hard hard ground. Of course, now I rue sleeping on the exact fare side of town, and having to walk through all this in my one and only set of light clothes.

"Good to see that you don't balk at the elements." Cosades meets me at the door. "Just don't try to face an ashstorm with the same attitude. New agents are hard to come by here." He gestures at the table, with its breakfast that most definitely, mercifully, contains bread. Saltrice reminds me too much of home, while falling sadly flat before the Nibenean variety.

"I'm your agent, then?"

"They told you to await orders, yes? Just think of yourself as my personal assistant, one who won't ever be on duty in my actual presence, however." He radically improves my mood with a distracted, acknowledging wave at the food. "Whatever vague notion you have of my position and role here will suffice, for now, but a word of warning. Your knowledge of me is quite capable of putting me in danger were it to become commonly available, so you may just imagine what, concurrently, my own knowledge could do to you."

It is an illustrative threat, but completely without malice. I feel assessed, and am suddenly loth to come up wanting.

"Understood."

"Capital. And with that I invite—or rather order—you to embark on a project of research."

"Research?"

"The information I received from Cyrodiil has exposed my ignorance at every turn. Your findings will educate us both. Which reminds me. Can you defend yourself?"

"Can I what?"

Non sequiturs were strange from his lips. It's a question to give one pause, too. I and every girl I knew could nick an artery in a situation bad enough. But such a feminine (in the City, at least) defense is far removed from fighting, much less combat. I'm spry enough, I know, but those quarterstaff lessons in the Cheydinhal highlands were a lifetime ago. True, I flattened everyone in the class under the age of twenty, but the expertise went to seed after that. You don't want to flaunt a martial skill in the City, not when so many are eager to prove themselves your better, and when mathematically speaking several hundred of them must be. The supposedly civilized capital of all Tamriel harbors many a sort who think nothing of hitting a girl, and I suppose it's the same way here.

"I ask because it might come up. I don't intend to use you for violence, but that doesn't mean I won't lose you to it."

I show him my pen knife with a diffident look.

"I see. Before anything else, go and buy yourself something a touch more intimidating. And some travel-ready clothes will be equally important. If you don't make a nuisance of it, you can store things here." He produces a coin purse, the girth of which makes my eyes widen. The reaction does not go unnoticed. "Remember what I said earlier." Cosades' tone makes no doubt as to the reference. "Spend it discreetly and sparingly."

"And after that?"

"After that, your first assignment. You know where to find the Fighters in town?"

"Same plaza as the other guilds?"

"Just so. The drillmaster there is Hasphat Antabolis."

"And a mouthful."

"Indeed. Some of us are born too Nibenese for our own good. But don't interrupt. Antabolis is an acquaintance of mine, and fancies himself a scholar. I would meet with him myself where he not constantly surrounded by lip-flapping mercenaries."

I squeeze rainwater from my hair (remember to crop it to pre-prison length) into a saucer while he continues.

"You are to ask for all the information he has on two subjects, the—should I write this down?"

"No need. I remember everything."

"Yes, well, I expect your results in writing. I need information concerning two local sects, both obscure and illegal. The Nerevarine Cult and the Sixth House."

"The Sixth House Cult and..."

"The Nerevarine Cult. Really, you should learn as much from this as I do, and understanding any of it will require some background knowledge. No point being part of history if you can't comprehend it." A rare grin. "Come to think of it, take this volume here, a concise account of Morrowind since the Merethic. You have no business in this business without the basics."

"Can I just ask for Hasphat, or should I be more discreet?" The book appears harmless enough.

"Oh, no need. I plan for you to remain permanently unconnected to me, although you have already blundered in twice, so no point worrying about that in the future. Just be advised; I owe Antabolis a rather hefty favor as it stands, and he may ask you to return it. Don't expect my assistance, if his request is in reason. This is, in part, a test of the Emperor's wisdom."

"I was sent here by the Em—"

"More on that later. Best of luck, Naleva."

And he shunts me out the door just like that. Off I go across town again, but at least the rain has slowed to just blowing mist. The Guild of Fighters has a cramped exercise yard in the back, and it abuts a market. Now that I have the money, I buy a traveler's coat at a stall run by an old crone (Although as a settled ashlander, maybe she's not much older than I. Imperial ebony mines will age you right up). The long tunic is a dull red, with a netch skin inner layer to ward off blown ash and some of the rain. Most important are the hood and long sleeves; they'll let me pass for native much more easily.

Looks like girls tend to line up at the walls of the guild yard to watch musclebound swords-for-hire sweat on each other. It's an easy place to blend in, but only the pretty ones are likely to gain entrance this way. So out to the front street.

Putting my shoulder into a jammed iron handle, I almost collide with a mailed woman on the way out the main door. She looks pale and irate, but both are likely just everyday Nordic characteristics.

"Do you have business here?"

Well, give me a minute. I'm definitely not carrying anything that could be construed as a delivery, nor do I resemble any manner of Fighters Guild client. So what does that leave? Prostitute? Guild member, Talos forbid?

"Master Antabolis is expecting this today." I wave Cosades' book by the spine, but reverently so. My obstacle wiggles her nose in an abrasive sort of way.

"Kyne's Breath, why does he only take interest in the dusty ones?" True, the cover and binding are fairly worn.

"Do you know where I might find him? The missive only mentioned the guild generally, and he wants to receive it in person."

"Aye. Just keep heading down the stairs until you get to a practice room that feels like an orcish oven."

"My thanks." I step back to allow her through first.

True to word, the building goes down and down, windowless clay corridors with an unvarnished wooden lattice supporting the ceiling, all to shelter its occupants from the ash that hasn't come down in generations. And after the second gentle staircase it _is_ hot, and damp, as if we're down to river-level. Ahead's the broad practice room covered in mats of stuffed netch leather. Only one man inside, this time of day, of slight build with papery face and thinning hair, but arms like braided rope.

"Hasphat Antabolis?" Best to go out on a limb (as the Bosmer say), for the sake of a good first impression.

"And you are?"

"Naleva of Polefel." I invent a second name on the fly, and by Mephala, this one will do in the future. Even though the syntax is Breton. "Might I have a word in private?"

He eyes Cosades' book, clearly making a number of wrong guesses as to my intentions and identity.

"Very well." A plain acquiescence that betrays nothing. We enter a side room filled with polearms and two low benches.

"Master Antabolis, I understand that you are a student of Morrowind lore."

"Only a very few understand as you do."

"Including, for instance, the lore of the Sixth House and Nerevarine Cults?" I drop the book onto the bench beside me, concealing the title. No need to be seen reading the Novice's Guide to Ignorance while seeking credibility.

"A curious subject," he exclaims, although it's clear that the adjective applies more to my query. "I wonder how you came to know of my work on the resurgence of the Sixth House Cult."

"Would you..." My urban request to share his knowledge comes out stillborn. And I'd been doing so well this far.

"Of course, my research is the result of much personal dedication, some of which I plan to compile and publish via the University of Gwylim. So you'll understand that my desire to oblige your curiosity is at odds with the requirements of scholarship."

This fellow is too polite. And a drillmaster. I drop the act.

"Look, Ant—Master Antabolis. I've come on behalf of..." the practice room remains empty, "...Caius Cosades. If you could allow us anything of use, it would—"

"Ah, but Caius has not come in person, which does not make me unduly covetous in this case." His manner changes instantly. "Old Cosades is in my debt, as a matter of speaking. I believe I can trust him with my findings, but his use of an errand girl such as yourself does stir the imagination."

Here it comes. But instead he leans over, as fast as only a fighter can move, and retrieves the book.

"Jeanette Sitte. Not the best choice, I dare say, but not the worst either. Listen here, Naleva... of Polefel. I will draw up an ideal little dossier for my truant companion Caius Cosades, but only if you indulge my covetous whims during the interim."

"Go on."

"In the ruins of Arkngthand—"

"Beg pardon?"

"Arkngthand. You know of the Dwemer, surely. Dwarves?"

"I know a good parcel of children's tales, at least."

"Lovely. Any recollection you have involving steam is likely not egregiously false. But to reiterate, the ruined Dwemer acropolis of Arkngthand stands just across Foyada Mamaea. A short distance from Fort Moonmoth, in fact."

Suddenly this favor sounds a touch more fatal, if I'm to even half-believe all the stories about the Dwarves and their steam.

"Are you familiar with the laws on the ruins, Naleva?"

"His Majesty has a monopoly on Dwemer artifacts, right?"

"Not only that, they are his _personal_ property, with the death penalty for all looters and traffickers."

Oh, balls.

"Now, I plan to turn everything I examine over to the proper authorities some day, so the violation of this law does not phase me overmuch. Why should science not benefit from my extraction of property the Emperor would otherwise never see? And besides, it is you who shall do the bulk of the violating. You or Caius. And somehow I doubt that _he_ could ever face the headsman for such a paltry offense."

"Your concern is touching, sir." I feel I've earned that one. "But merely continue and I shall comply."

"Excellent! You should know that Arkngthand is currently inhabited by a small band of scavengers and smugglers. They are waiting for Red Mountain to fill the foyada, so that they can move heavy objects to the coast without being interdicted by Fort Moonmoth's patrols."

I raise my eyebrows.

"Oh, you work for Cosades, so don't look so aggrieved. The Guild caught one of their contacts, so we'll be able to swoop down on them before they make off with the loot. I'm not about to let the contents of a unique Dwemer observatory hit the black market. I'd much rather see it hanging up in the capital with my name underneath it. But when the guild has its men swarming everywhere, acquiring even small objects for the purposes of personal study becomes difficult."

He stands to duck his head in a nearby wash basin.

"You've proven to be an exhausting guest, Naleva. But I near the end. I arranged to pre-purchase a certain bauble from the the leader of the smugglers one week ago. He has since reneged on our deal, so I need you to approach him and persuade him to sell. Or steal. Or bring the legion down on his head. I don't care."

"And what is this bauble?"

Antabolis offers me a sweaty shot glass of Sujamma.

"A puzzle box. An engraven cub about the size of your fist, apparently of copper, but perfectly ageless." He pauses for effect. "Look for circular symbols in relief, and linear scratches on various faces of the cube. That's all I want, and all I'll accept."

For a few minutes now the sounds of sparring have been coming in from the main room outside. The grunting of an orc, and something more human. I sense that I'm on the way out.

"That's all as clear as it can be, Antabolis. I'll be back within a few days."

"I relish your enthusiasm! Truth be told, there are any number of additional questions you should have asked before accepting such a dangerous bargain. I'm sure you and Caius have your resources, but at least you will need to know how to get through the gates. The trick is to find a valve on a pipe near the globe portal. Understand?"

I'm ushered back upstairs with a nod and not a single word further.


	8. Chapter 8

Midday sun on the street, and I'm nose-deep in my second cup of the Lucky Lockup's cheapest Mazte. Chuna watches my progress with half a dozen possible emotions in his inscrutable lizard eyes.

"It is a weighty world athwart us, Naleva. But still Chuna must ask, what troubles you so?"

"Trouble? Say, what timing!" Todwendy makes another of her impeccable entrances.

"Well, Chuna, how would you feel if you were stuck into the hero's role from one of your bloodier songs, all without your say-so?"

"I would say that they were looking for me, but settled for the lizard." Todwendy's ebullience is a bit more pronounced today. A good mood to match my gloom.

"Would that it _was _your job."

"But why must Naleva do such a thing?" Now his eyes are readable, metallic lids and all.

"Because..." A sigh. "Because I have one means of survival on this island, with no hope to leave, and my one option asks a lot of me. It's not a subject for tavern tables, but it involves hard men, and thievery."

Todwendy stirs (beautifully) at the words, but Chuna cuts in first.

"But have not you, Naleva, any other way to bread? No talents?"

I shrug.

"I'm literate."

"You could join the temple," the Redguard offers.

"Which one?" I snap without meaning to.

"_Either."_

"Anyone of intelligence can survive," the bard presses. "Even here."

"Or," Todwendy slithers (I chose this word with an actual Argonian present) into the seat next to me, "my fascinating friend, you could let me show you how to survive instead. What _exactly _is the problem, honey? I have heard three words about it that I liked."

I'm sure I looked positively miserable just then.

"I can't tell you about it, not exactly nor inexactly... but then again, I can't _do _anything about it either."

Chuna sits up expectantly. The barman is far away.

"...Well, it's not as bad as having to steal from the Tong next door," I murmur, "but I do have to steal from a gang of smugglers."

Todwendy slaps her thigh.

"Oh! Darling girl, you don't have to _steal_ from _smugglers! _You can just kill them. And not even feel bad about it afterward. They sell Skooma to peasant children and buy cheap beastfolk slaves to force-feed moonsugar packets, and cut them open on arrival." Chuna nods solemnly.

"...Kill them?"

"Or call a friend."

"To kill them?"

She smiles brilliantly.

"I do have that gift myself."

I look down at my empty cup.

"Satakock! You don't think that I am serious. Chuna!" she demands. "Am I serious?"

"I do not know, my muse. In my prosaic dreams, I wish that you are."

"Naleva, dear, I want to torment you less than I want to see you in a cassock. Tell me, could you handle yourself in a fight?"

A pause.

"Her hesitation speaks to something," Chuna observes.

"I'd rather be off doing the stealing part."

"Nonsense! Chuna, pick up her tab and I will let you sing that awful ballad tonight. We are market-bound, my girl."

Unsurprisingly, she moves fast, right out the door where for the first time I see the long dirk bouncing at her hip. I try and keep up, but the lower regions are none too steady after three morning drinks. Todwendy is waiting for me by the entrance, suddenly at my shoulder ushering me forward. Verily, we are market-bound.

"Er, tell me, Todwendy. What is it exactly you do?"

"Recently? Nothing of true interest. A long trip to Vvardenfell, troubleshooting for House Hlaalu. As a deniable agent, of course. Now that it's over and the they almost know what hit them, I can talk about it. A little."

Now tell me whey the clever Imperials didn't hire her instead.

"But to business. How were you taught to fight?"

"How..."

"If that fat Dres on the palanquin over there sent his bodyguard to rape you, for example—"

"I'd hit him between the legs with a broom handle until the bristles came out his nose."

"Bravo! Did you learn the use of a staff then, in Cyrodiil? I hear your eastern monks will not touch real weapons."

"Once... years and years ago."

"That will be good enough. An old skill isn't a lost talent, but a tradition, and tradition is something you Dunmer are adept at."

To my surprise, we stop outside the Fighters Guild.

"There is a stand with cheap guild surplus just up here," she explains. "Of course a broom handle won't do. You need something weighed and measured, with grain spun right so it won't break on you. And made of Cyrodic haftwood, if they have it for any price."

Todwendy halts before the armaments stall that has duly materialized in recognition of her enthusiasm. In moments, she reaches down and picks out a shortsword, as long as my forearm, not counting the hilt, single-edged, with a vague falchion shape to the tip.

"Even I can tell that that's no staff."

"No weapon is truly a weapon that is not a blade, Naleva. Before the gods your soul is shaped like one, did you know that?"

"I—"

"Naleva, I will pay half if you accept a worthy instrument such as this, because I am flush and you, you half-love me already."

Somehow I had taken gentle old Chuna for the only rogue in that inn. It went on like that, with Todwendy becoming more giddy and more totally in control of my every move. There was a quarterstaff, and some lunch with sweet tea, the realization that she relished my private adoration of her, and all of a sudden we were standing at the Odai crossing beneath the town. Todwendy had grown leather armor from somewhere. Perhaps its presence—and the prospect of an hour's walk towards Fort Moonmoth—sobered her up.

"Are you well and ready to do this, Naleva? I hate not to finish a thing, once I've started it, whatever the reasons..." She looked back at the town, nonplussed by her own onslaught. "...and we have come too far now to honorably retire. By a few dozen paces, in fact. Yet I don't wish to take you where you can't follow, or if you believe it won't resolve your dilemma."

The sun yawned, and stretched out to recline in her wrinkled hair.

"Lead on."

The road east out of Balmora much resembles the Odai road into it, but for the traces of greenery on the lefthand side. It runs through yet another of Vvardenfell's narrow valleys, with ashswept outcroppings periodically appearing to the south.

As we walked, Todwendy effortlessly pried information out of me. That, or who knows, maybe I was anxious to share. Whether through my own caginess or her sensing of the hard limits, the conversation never touched on the circumstances that actually brought us here. She began to seem somewhat embarrassed at the way she could and did overpower me with a mere toss of her head. Now and again I caught her throwing glances, as if to see whether I would suddenly start to take offense. The rest of our passage to Fort Moonmoth was comradely, but more reserved.

"See the watchtower?"

"What ever convinced Talos to shit out that monstrosity _here,_ of all places? Gods!"

Moonmooth proves to be a singularly heedless structure, its crenelations and masonry walls perfectly transplanted from the Colovian frontier. I can't imagine how far the builders had to go to quarry that pale stone. Stick another pin in the myth of Imperial practicality.

"The patch to Arky leads just above the garrison, as though they're more worried about defending it than Balmora." How fitting of her to re-cast the name of her destination as the Divine who will most likely collect my soul from there. "In truth, though, it guards the only foyada crossing outside the ashlands, and the proximity to Balmora is just a perk. Come, your eyes will bug out of your head once you see the bridge."

Honestly, in terms of pure brute size, Arky's bridge can't compare to the great western causeway of Cyrodiil City. The Ivory Span, however, doesn't have quite the same effect, and certainly doesn't shout at you in alien tongues. The bridge here is all rust-colored metal, and the wind (mountain wind!) passing through its eighty-foot arches makes a horrendous wailing noise. Its railings are steel pipes, the walkway grooved iron. Whatever lies beyond is still shrouded in what Todwendy says is a cloud of steam seepage from the muck fields to our east.

What didn't impress me quite so much then, in my ignorance, was the desolate ravine that the bridge allowed us to cross. Looking down, I noticed a distant strip of pure ashland, its cracked soil black as pitch, completely confined to the U-shaped trench. My first look at Foyada Mamaea was the last time I would ever view it so sanguinely.

Formed by Red Mountain through some obscure process, the foyadas are the dry beds of lava rivers, and this one leads straight through Ghostgate to the Dwemeri crater citadels themselves. The Star-Wound's fire burns hot, higher in temperature than dragonfire (a curious general of Talos' happened to have a dragon on hand and was able to measure both), and it runs like blood. Most of the foyadas vent the lava straight to the sea, but Mamaea's great length sees it cool and pile up in a great heap north of Seyda Neen. In fact, such is likely the origin of the wasted heights I crossed on foot, my very first day. For whatever reason, the will of the Scarab perhaps, almost none of it sticks to the foyada's bed in the interim, so they make perfect roads, smooth and open, with only a shallow coating of blown ash. Sometimes a decade passes between the flood eruptions that fill the foyadas to their banks, and trees have time to grow on the sides. Mamaea in its lower reaches resembles a trail through a dead forest, as a large (but still only a few feet deep) outflow from the mountain last year set fire to hundreds of trees by rising heat alone. Oh, and there are more cliffracers there than anywhere else imaginable. Fuck foyadas.

"Funny fellows, the Dwemer." The levity in Todwendy's voice cracks somewhat. "They defied the gods with every brick they laid. And look where it got them." I refrain from asking where, and instead peer at the smoke that hides Arky from view, just across the foyada.

And then _Maramercy,_ a ringing concussion in my ear and a rush of leathery, squawking noise. Two more seconds and Todwendy is helping me to my feet. I'm still too shocked to accomplish it myself, yet subconsciously lecherous enough to stagger into her gratefully as I rise.

"Cunt a' Kyne! What was that?"

"Racer," comes the reply. "They like to dive on you when you're trespassing."

"And what, did he try to drop a churchbell on my head?"

A crystalline laugh.

"No, that was his tail barb hitting the metal post there. Be glad it wasn't your skull; it's about the only way they can kill someone who's healthy enough to resist." She retrieves my staff and the blade that's lashed to it. "Here. Let's hope they don't have a watch set outside Arky. You let out a bit of a whoop there, going down."

Fantastic.

The white haze on the bluff ahead of us has begun to orbit slowly, and she eyes it with unease.

"Better put that hood up, Naleva. Could be blowing red soon."

Yep, that cloud has definitely started shifting, and breeze tickles the side of my scalp. All at once, a pale silk curtain evaporates, and Arky throws its arms wide, demanding to see our credentials.

A cluster of metallic towers, headed by spined turrets and paraphernalia that resembles nothing so much as torture devices. True to lore, most of it must be underground, except for jumbled pipes and vents around the blasted surface of the massif. Far to the east, an immense globe has been set into the rock, with a great protruding tree trunk of iron that angles at the heavens, shouting defiance. It is all of it subtly terrifying.

"Well, there you are, Naleva. And tomorrow morning when you finish staring, you can catch a glimpse of the sea behind you as well. Always a comforting sight, even for you mudwater types."

There it is, too. Just a little glint down by the mouth of the Odai where I was the day before yesterday. Can't see much else, though. When I turn back, Todwendy has changed faces, her entire frame gone stuff and statuesque. And gods above, there is a man on the other end of the bridge, trying to stretch his back muscles from inside a clumsy cuirass of unsegmented iron.

"Get that poker of yours ready, Naleva. I need you to be the intimidating one."

Oh, _that_ ought to go well, since she's wearing the armor and all of the confidence. But I lower the bladed tip of my staff anyways (just as Gallenus taught us never to hold it), aiming roughly at the air above the bandit's head. He approaches, armed but not drawn, with an uneven swagger. An oldish fellow, I notice, white of hair. He leads with a scowl.

"You girls! You don't look like tourists."

I expected Todwendy to be all words, but instead she's standing slightly behind me, with downcast eyes and the air of dormant grain hoist.

"Are you headed in to see Crito? Well you just tell him that I can stay here pissing in his air vents for as long as it takes, 'til he comes out to treat with me. That sweat deal wasn't nothing like he said it'd be, and I'll take him to task for it!"

I renew my grip on the weapon. But my companion suddenly revives.

"Oh, so you've business with Crito too?"

"Aye, the _boss, _those dogs call him." This bridge troll seems to notice her for the first time, and splits a gap-toothed, sickly sweet smile. "But who might you be, dearie? I'm Granius, but friends call me Snowy."

'Snowy' denoting his status as the only aged brigand in Vvardenfell, no doubt.

"Wendy," comes the answering grunt. Her voice has entirely changed, now suited to herding violent men and brooking no insolence. "And my patron is no friend of Crito. Is that lot still underground, picking at their noses?"

"Aye, and leaving poor Snowy out here to his camp on Dagon's bridge." Snowy gestures at a parked handcart containing a stowed tent and some supplies.

"I was dispatched," Todwendy continues on in her severe tone, "to make contact with Crito. I and my employer have no more love for him than you, so I trust you will not get in our way." I swear she shot me a wink, somehow.

"Get in the way... me?" Mercy, no, it's the _mountain_ that's in the way. Crito is so sick of my banging on his locked doors, I don't think anyone's even within earshot of the surface anymore." He grins. "You two'll just have to stay here and wait with little Snowy."

"So you do not know how to gain entrance," she states, and walks around the armored obstacle.

Granius' eyes go wide.

"You can get _in?_ Take me with you! I'll follow just behind and make no trouble, by Aka and Sai!"

"I doubt our intentions concerning Crito are compatible, Master Granius."

"They are! Will be, you'll see! I'll wait until you two've concluded, then speak my piece. Your boss won't mind! Who is he?" She shoots him a contemptuous look, but carries on walking. "There's a round dozen of them in there, all ready to crack. They'll gut you, he doesn't like what you have to say."

"I hardly think he w—"

"It's true! I rolled with these boys on down the Helnim sugar line. You should've seen how they treated the carriers!"

We all halt on her unspoken command.

"Very well, Granius. In the event that we encounter difficulties, you may follow us down, and have your pick of Crito's forfeit assets for any assistance you render us. But stay behind, stay mute, and out of sight until then. I have neither time nor patience for your pathetic feud."

"Yes, milady!"

That settled, Snowy falls in with us, trudging along too close behind me. In the seconds after we turn out attention back to the spiked summit of Arky, the roiling skyborne wave curls above us, and an ashstorm hits. It's a definite blast, like a Rumare squall in summer, yet the first reaction is pain, pain in the rasping skin of my forearms and face. I tear at my sleeves and throw on the hood, shedding ash tears. The volcanic hail pours from the surface of Granius' breastplate, glancing off at angles with a sound like falling nails. Peering through my fingers, I can just see Todwendy moving through a crimson world that's coming at me sideways. The sky looks like doomsday, and she doesn't seem to be handling the dusty torrent much better than I. But she points up at the top of the hill, and it comes to me that only I know how to open the doors.

So put your back into the climb and fight the urge to close your eyes. Need to watch your footing. The ground is all loose pebbles and sand, now starting to break off and slide downslope in the wind. Exposed flesh feels like it's being scraped off, and every few seconds a fair-sized pebble comes hurtling along to strike me in the shins. Thorny bits of broken-off scathecraw blow past as well, the only sort of airborne object that hasn't yet caught me in the face.

Steaming past Todwendy, I enter a sort of trough in the hillside, and the ashflow lessens. There above me is a stone (the first such construction so far) archway, topped by a dome. Underneath is a coppery sphere that looks to be Hasphat's 'globe door.' I sense my Redguard companion at my shoulder, standing there to help me appraise the dome. Granius is struggling along somewhere behind.

"Well?" Amazing how the wind plucks her voice from her throat.

"Antabolis said to look for a valve." His name slips my lips unintentionally.

"That's the door there," Snowy bellows. I send him back an annoyed glance, only to see him leaning on a length of exposed pipe, trying in vain to shield his bare arms. The pipe seems out of place, and on closer inspection, the remnants of a larger mechanism stand beneath. Underneath the din of the storm, it is hissing with steam, the bronzed surface vibrating beneath Granius' touch.

"Snowy!"

"What?"

"Turn that valve there! Underneath your fat hands there!"

A moment's confusion and consternation on his face, then he screws his eyes shut and leans in on the metal knob like he's trying to strangle it. A loud screech, a puff of white vapor and then the globe door splits down the middle and the two halves rotate away from each other noiselessly. Actually a semicircle, the pair of metal slices reveal a stone portal, encrusted with runes and a large engraving of something humanoid and hostile. I step into the globe, only to have its panels slide past each other and return to the closed position, clicking shut behind my back. For a moment of near-panic, I am enclosed in that dark space between globe and stone slab, with the wind suddenly stilled so that pounds of dust fall lifelessly to the floor. Then a faint grating sound, Todwendy's voice telling Granius to wait there, and she steps through the splitting globe to stand close against me. Somehow I can _hear_ the grin on her face.

"Funny sort of handle, that valve. He'll follow us in a few minutes."

"I don't see any kind of handle at all, here." She is taller than I am. I can feel the front of her leathered thigh against me. "No knocker, either."

"Give it a push."

"Seriously?"

Todwendy flits past to lay a palm on the door. I didn't notice her exert any force, but this door rotates open too, spinning on its central axis with perfect smoothness. She walks through on the right and after several seconds' pause, I pass on the left.


	9. Chapter 9

How convenient to be blind for the first few moments. Digesting the sound and smell of this place is much easier to do in the dark, as opposed to all once with the added input of sight. First, there's the floor, which is vibrating so hard that I can feel the bumps in the metal through my shoes. All around I can feel belts turning in the walls, a layered chorus of rattles, creaks, moans and other mechanical noises. Every time I turn my head, one emanation shifts in volume and space, its prominence passing on to some other sound. In a few minutes, I'll begin to discern the slow heartbeat of the place, the pattern by which the hidden steam-powered components fade into one another, with the periodic screeching of a damaged gear keeping time between cycles. This is impossible. Ho can it all still be running? Wasn't it all built two thousand years ago?

And then my eyes are good for the scattering of candles on the grotto floor below, the short section of light-emitting pipes on the walls. We're standing on a miniature version of the foyada bridge outside, but this one projects out into a rough cavern only to be roughly truncated by a pile of stone debris. So it's ruin after all. And the machines are still running.

Where before I was so conscious of my companion's presence, now she is gone. Todwendy has to stir from motionlessness and touch my shoulder before becoming palpable again. Steel glitters in the darkness, and she closes my fingers around the haft of the spear. Somehow it focuses my attention forward to the grey figure seated at the end of the bridge. Half illuminated by a mouldering pile of trama root shavings, the sentry is wearing armor more ragged than Snowy's, a slender warhammer at his feet. The noise in here has covered up our entrance.

_Stay_, Todwendy communicates in that voiceless way of hers. Then she flows into a flickering grey shape, to merge with the bridge's railing and pad forward on shadowy feet. It's only two dozen paces, but she still covers the ground fast enough for me to blink in surprise. Her silhouette blends with the crouching glint of the guard, there is a click, and the tinny crunch of his breastplate hitting the stone floor. I rush forward to the edge of the bridge, anxious to distinguish Towendy's face from the lethal blur in the darkness. I know that the sound won't travel far in here, but I can still hear my feet clanking against the metal platform, while hers never did. In the orange half-light of the flameless wire-and-pipe lamps, I see her smile.

"Paralysis charm," she whispers, pulling a lacquered wooden mask from the smuggler's stony face. And Sai save us, his eyes are open, angry and terrified.

Todwendy and I peer over the railing. The floor of the cavern sists perhaps thirty feet below is, jumbled with broken-up floor tiles. A cave-in provides a ramp made of boulders, leading down to a well-lit passageway, all of metal. Someone is pacing the hallway, out of sight around the corner where the footfalls make coppery echoes. In the other direction, partly beneath the entrance platform, stands a sort of tiered gallery, radiating soft, colored light. The lower levels looks a little like a Leyawiin porch done by Dwarves, with doors set into the walls and thick pillar supporting a mezzanine-like structure. Actually, the platform above is a near-replica of the platform below, open to the cavern interior and accessed by more of those bronzed doors.

And up top there, leaning back on a three-legged Dwemer stool with his feet propped up on an immense iron desk, is a third smuggler. This one's surrounded by bulging sacks and a few barrels made from that stringy, gristly wood that only comes from Vvardenfell. So if Hasphat is to be believed, that leaves nine more of these fellows, somewhere around here. Shezarr's Shit, what do you do with eleven angry cutthroats? Todwendy inspires awe and confidence only to a point. I'll just have to hope that her reaction upon hearing about the Fighters Guild drillmaster was the glimmerings of a plan.

"Can you knock them all out with that mask of your?" This place demands more than a whisper.

"Not unless they are every one as dim as Snowy."

"Let's hope he doesn't come charging in any time soon."

"Aye. I told him to count to one thousand and come through the doors quietly. A whistle will bring him down below. That's where we're headed. Stay away from that hallway and walk towards the doors, quietly but naturally. Ready to move?"

We pick our way down the treacherous stepping-stone ramp, wary of loose pebbles and gaps between shadows. I try to walk in Todwendy's footsteps exactly, curling up my toes inside my shoes to cling to slanted rock faces. Several times I have to catch myself with the staff, and receive a sharp look as the sound reverberates around Arky's interior. The smuggler's footsteps have receded. So now there's only the man lounging on the floor above. I spot the soft glow of a Skooma pipe cradled in the fingers of his dangling left hand. That could be good or bad.

I can't help but hiss with alarm as Todwendy stands fully upright and moves towards the well-lit galley. She walks with surety, holding her midsection and chin high as if she's the smugglers' landlord. Her feet, though, flit across the floor toe-to-heel. A duchess above, a burglar below. Following her as best I can, I move with a similar lack of visual stealth, but also with the air of an adulteress on a penance march. An adulteress with a spear. Todwendy motions for me to flip it upside down down. The sharp tip makes less noise on the floor, and maybe someone will mistake it for a walking stick. Staff or not, we make the lower set of doors without being challenged from above. Threading through a grouping of iron kegs, the next door (she appears to choose at random but likely does not) requires little deciphering.

Voices are immediately audible in the corridor beyond. Todwendy pauses for the time it takes to drawn four long breaths and counts the different speakers up ahead, ticking them off on her fingers. And then before I can think to object, the crazy raga strides round the nearest corner into full view of a populated room. Three more men dressed in the lighter undergarments of ashlands gear, sweating in a square chamber with a grating for a floor. The orc—sitting on a miscellaneous piece of Dwemeri equipment and re-braiding his hair—glances at us as we come in. My mouth drops open as he seems to disregard us. Then the thought pushes through his orichalcum skull, he jerks, snaps his back up for a second look—

"Where's Crito?" Todwendy's imperious voice pre-empts the uproar of our arrival. "We have business."

The room breaks into sudden motion, the two specimens in back lungering for coppery gears and heavy flagons, as they don't seem to have weapons at hand. One of them misjudges and rams his shoulder into a spinning hoop, dislodging the belt that kept the contraption running. The orc has a knife, though. A big knife.

"Shor's blood! Where the hell did you come from!"

"I told you. I have business with Crito. Where is he?"

"How did—what have you done with Dathman?"

"Your sentry? The idiot is sleeping at his post. Did you think you were the only ragpickers who know how to open the doors? Amateurs like you?" She lets the word hang in the air for a moment, daring the stock-still smugglers to mistake her identity. A fatal mistake, her eyes warned. "Now go get Crito."

"Who _are _you two bints?"

"That's for Crito to hear. I am losing patience."

The Nord on the right nods at his bruised companion, who pounds out of sight down the hall. And then a wave of his hand.

"Idhdean, go fetch Ruuz and the others from down at the observatory dig and bring them here." Slowly, we altogether realize that the only path to the observatory is through Todwendy. She shakes her head in a solemn, murderous way, and the orc backs down.

Mercifully, it is only moments before feet sound on stairs and Boss Crito storms into the room. A hairless Cyrodil with deep-set eyes, he is clutching an axe with a look that says blood.

"Crito!" Once again, she seizes control of the room. "My name is Tovenda. I have a message from Orvas Dren." The last name—familiar somehow—she pronounces with such aggressive clarity that everyone stays still, and no one speaks.

No one except Crito, that is. He marches his scowling face up to Todwendy (who doesn't even blink), halting a fingerlength from her nose.

"Dren," he repeats with derision. "And I supposed you expect me to believe that now they let bitch raga work for the Camonna Tong?"

Thanks be to Stendarr, I somehow didn't squeal when she whipped her hand back and slapped him. It happened so fast that by the time he felt the pain, her arms were idle again at her sides, nowhere near a weapon, and the next words were already leaving her lips.

"What nonsense do you speak of? I did not name the Tong. I spoke only of my master Orvas Dren, Councilor of House Hlaalu, and do not like what I hear suggested of him."

"You—"

"Need I remind you of the respect due to that name?" Everyone else in the room has produced weapons now, but they hold them uncertainly, and Crito takes a step back.

"And how..." She cuts him off with a clench of her raised fist.

"May I present Naleva Vahari, Matron of the Morag Tong. She has come at the courteous request of my master to officiate and notarize our dealing before the judgment of the voidwaters. Our lives are forfeit to her justice should we prove faithless."

Matron! Of the Morag Tong? Suspicion and unease mingle in Crito's face, together forming confusion.

"Alright then, Tavenda, speak your piece. But you can tell Dren that I don't like being sent someone with no manners, and being expected to kowtow to someone no one has ever heard of." He squints. "Any of you boys ever heard of Tavenda?" A chorus of 'no.' "And that silent sister of your look like no 'agtong Matron I've ever seen."

"If Dren had thought to negotiate trade with you," she says softly, "he would have summoned you to a meeting with a business associate of proper station. If he sought to claim his rights from you, he would have sent delegation capable of enforcing his decision. In this case, however," she continues, her tone disarming the tension raised by her preceding sentence, "he has sent only me, to amicably resolve a relatively minor issue. In fact, I have come to procure a single item, a trifle, really. He expects you to treat with me as a sign of your respect for him, in order to win his favor."

"A single item."

"Be so good as to have someone fetch the puzzle box you found, so that I know I am not wasting our time." This gets her a curious look from Crito. "You have nowhere civilized to sit in here, so let us retire to the landing outside and discuss terms."

She doesn't even wait for him to acquiesce, and I am by now suitably practiced in anticipating her movements that we turn in unison. Back out on the porch that opens into the main cavern, Todwendy seats herself at a (heavily pillaged) desk and awaits Crito's oncoming footsteps. A faint smile on her face and a glance at the ceiling tells me that Granius is waiting in the entranceway above.

The boss arrived with his orc and sits down on a Dwemer storage canister. I stay standing, paired with the green bodyguard.

"As you requested, the puzzle box is on its way. Why exactly you—"

"Permit me to explain," she cuts in. "I understand that a member of the Fighters Guild attempted to purchase it recently."

"Aye, that he did. He wouldn't offer me the courtesy of a fair price, nor the guarantees needed in such a position."

"Your refusal has saved Dren—and myself—a good deal of trouble. Antabolis is under the command of the Balmora branch, but gets on better with the likes of the Ald-ruhn chapter. His colleagues there do not see eye-to-eye with our friend Eydis Fire-eye."

"Not the Tong, you're from, eh?" A sarcastic, toothy grin.

"I do not know why Antabolis sought the puzzle box at the same time as my master, but it is not important. He could not be relied upon to cooperate."

The Nord reappears, and the cube trapped inside his big paw fits the description handily. Crito accepts the bauble, waves his subordinate off, then scrutinizes it.

"This ugly little thing? That's what you want? I couldn't believe it when Antabolis got so worked up over it either." Todwendy shoots me an inquiring glance, and I nod in affirmation. "Say, this isn't worth thousands or anything, is it?"

"Not to you. It has no market value even to a scholar or collector, unless they are familiar with its specific purpose. It resembles a child's toy, does it not?"

Crito rests his hand on his knee and looks up, eyes full of calm and dignified avarice.

"So, Tavenda. You mentioned terms."

"Just so. For the trifle, Dren is willing to offer you three times Antabolis' price, sight unseen." Her voice is marked by boredom, at first. "Alternately, he sees this serendipitous occasion as a symbol of better things to come, and invites you to come as his guest to Ascadia. There is much to discuss concerning future transactions, larger ones that will require your specific set of skills."

"We'll take the money," Crito spits out abruptly.

Todwendy's full lips become a thin line.

"Dren instructed me to view the _gift_ of the puzzle box as a sign of your respect, a guest-offering to his villa in the Isles, a down payment on your future partnership, if you will."

"Oh, we respect him, alright, but even a man of Dren's stature knows that you can't expect a man to work for you, without he sees a bit of coin first. And three times Antabolis' pitiful coinpurse is nothing to your bossman. I have need of respect too, you know."

"I certainly see the reason in your request, but my master is a proud man. I cannot guarantee that his pleasure with this transaction will survive untarnished. Additionally, my Morag Tong companion was prepared to bind our agreement in blood, and has nothing to contribute to a simple purchase of the item. You may insult her office as well."

Crito looks me in the eye.

"Your pardon, milady Nahari, I mean no offense. I never asked you to come to my place of business, nor looked for this deal, so you'll understand." Shit, I know there is something I should be doing to help here, some devastating answer that my she would put through my lips if she could. "Tavenda, I need the money, unless your master can buy me half a guar caravan to move my goods off this rock."

Todwendy sighs.

"Very well, Crito. It is a disappointment for me personally, but I will not press the issue further. What did Antabolis offer?"

"Five 'undred."

Damn.

"Fifteen hundred drakes, then."

Todwendy reaches into the satchel at her side with an unconcerned manner, and then two things happen at once. Or maybe not at once. But so close on each other's heels that I never will know which came first. If I had to guess, I would say that raising her fingers to her lips and letting out an earsplitting whistle that cut through the factory noise like a thunderbolt was the second thing that she did. Because the other thing she did was dart her blade from its sheath and whip it through the air in a burst of orange light. And the light passed through Crito's upper thigh at fingerswidth depth, returning to lash at his hand so great red canyons opened up in his palm, and the puzzle box clattered to the floor.

Then the orc bellowed almost as loud as her whistle and lunged, but Naleva's braced spear caught him full in the chest. Her newly-sharpened blade cut through the sturdy ashproof fabric like it wasn't there, continuing on to dive into the gulf between his inflated pectoral muscles. Then both men were shrieking and thrashing about, a cacophony of overturning barrels and mortified echoes, the two of them outdoing each other with fountains of lifesblood. Todwendy scooped up the puzzle box and drew Naleva into the shadows by the cavern walls. Four smugglers from deeper in the gallery came rushing onto the platform, weapons ready, only to see Granius' armored form charging towards them. They did not notice the sudden confusion on his face when running to meet the old brigand, and the fivesome's steely collision lay about the cavern with echoes as we passed the swirl of fighting men on our way towards the surface. Mounting the ramp, prize in hand, the rest of Arkngthand's complement emerged from their work on the lower levels, pausing to consider the fleeing women at left, and the general melee at right. Granius had summoned a skeletal minion from the aether, and now struck out at his former partners with steel and spell. Two thrusts of Naleva's bladed staff discouraged pursuit for a moment, and although a pair of crossbow bolts ripped past in the darkness, Todwendy was able to find the interior door controls. As the globe portal shut behind them and the ashstorm blew harder, they half-ran half-slid down the massif towards the bridge, beyond which no one ventured to pursue them.

For the first few miles, with the ashstorm raging, I was almost giddy. We ran and didn't stop running, with the wind propelling us from behind and our eyes clear. On the ridge above Fort Moonmoth, the mountain wind hit the sweeter air of Odai and the Isles, funneling the blight into the air above us. Only a light dusting of ochre particles reached the ground, and Todwendy had me stop to wipe the blood from my spear. Its entire blade is shockingly red, from the tip where it was submerged, to the rivulets that collected at the hilt.

_You hit him right in the heart,_ she says. _So of course he's dead. What about Crito? Well, if they had an unusually gifted healer, they could have saved him. I expected them to help their boss rather than chase us, but I guess they didn't like him too much. If they took more than a minute killing Granius, Crito bled out in a big puddle._

Suddenly I remember it all differently. The shuddering impact running down haft to my palms, the shrieking and roaring and grotesque death throes. Butchery she started and I finished.

_You look a little green, Naleva._

_ I'll be fine._

_ You will. It will pass._

_ What if it doesn't?_

_ Then if it doesn't, that means you're not a killer, honey. Plain as that._

So there's a way out of this feeling, then. I think of the orc and Crito, of everything I saw them say and do, the way they probably grew up and left their families. Why they were sitting in Arkngthand.

_So I'm a killer, then._

_Congratulations. It's easier to live as one than to die righteous._

Yes, I must be. Because the feeling passes fast. Quite soon after the Fort, I am left with only a great buoyant sense of victory. But by Dibella, it's the kind of victory that you feel between your legs. Before the association can even unnerve me, the heat is creeping up my neck to reach my cheeks. I think I even flared my nostrils. Bloody Bal, I'd even do a man right now! Todwendy doesn't miss a thing and laughs.

"Bless you, Naleva! You looking at me like that, it's the first time I thought you might decide to up and pounce." I look away. "Don't be ashamed. It can happen after your life comes down to a throw of the dice, especially when you fight to roll sixes."

"Dice, eh? Let me see that puzzle box. Looks like a big copper die itself." She is still cradling it in her fingers, and smiles coyly at my request.

"In a moment, dear. But first tell me I'm not your first flame. Wouldn't want to torment you so, if it's just after some awakening you've had."

She has some ego, this one. I shake my head, all ready to retreat from the probe, but actually, I'm not feeling bashful in the least.

"So you've always been of this persuasion then?" she continues, tossing Antabolis' bauble from one hand to the other.

"Well, no, not always. As a girl I used to take the waterfront boys back to the garden granary loft, like we all did. Sometimes, just for the thrill of it." How is she making me _say_ this?

"What a little Dunmer you were! And then I suppose you wondered why everyone raved about those five minutes of grunting and pumping?" Todwendy titters. "I can empathize."

Fair enough, I suppose. But _gods,_ how I'd like to lay her out across the rock and—

"Fear not, Naleva. Just keep a bit of that fire in your belly and you will be as deadly with your charms as you are with that spear. I can tell."

"My spear?"

"Aye, your sticking staff. You moved almost as fast as I did, and didn't hesitate. Good instincts. If you can recall some of that childhood skill, you won't need my help at all."

"Except to walk and talk. Mephala's daughter, you were in there. Who is this Dren fellow, anyways?" She tosses me the puzzle box, as if to signify that we can talk about something other than my tastes in lechery.

"You already know as much as most. He's one of House Hlaalu's more powerful councilors, a right conservative old bastard in a forward-looking organization. But he also lacks a conscience, by all reports, and doesn't let his hostility to non-Dunmer get in the way of business. He owns half the Camonna Tong outright, you understand. And I may not be quite as accomplished a liar as you suppose. Crito wasn't going to part with that bloody little souvenir unless he made a tidy profit, Dren or no."

"Not Mephala's daughter, then. A distant niece."

"Well, I satisfy the sex and murder requirement. The other thing about the Tong is that they are well on their way to having the Fighters Guild in pocket. They own the Balmora chapter for sure."

"And do you have any idea what this thing is for?" I squint at the puzzle box and use my nail to scratch grime from the grooves on its face.

"What, Antabolis didn't tell you? I have no idea. Been here for a month, but I never did have occasion to set foot in a Dwarven ruin."

"And you just decided to risk your life in one on a lark? We met yesterday, you'll recall."

"Well, Chuna will be tickled pink to hear the story, and I'll make him accept it in liue of a small debt. That way he won't drink it away."

Oh, amiable lies. Still, I sense that she doesn't want to explain her motive, rather than having a hidden one.

"I see. I'd thank you, but—"

"The entertainment of your company has been payment enough, yes."

"Where did you get that mask?"

"Well, that's not important. It is a cunning little accessory, is it not? I'll wager that sentry is just now regaining the use of his limbs."

"Could I see it?"

"Naturally. Just don't, well, put in on, though I suppose that's superfluous to say."

It really is a thing of beauty, formed from delicate tropical wood and covered in maroon-and-black geometric patterns that can only be from Hammerfell. My finger pulses as I pick the mask, and I can feel it throb as I gingerly turn it over and over. Todwendy watches my face closely.

"A finely-crafted enchantment, done with an artisan's taste. You look transfixed, Naleva."

This is, in fact, my one magical talent. I could have told her of this artifact's purpose without being told. In moments, the contours and moods of the magicka contained here dance behind my mind's eyes. For the glimmerings of an instant, the mask winks at me with the swarthy face of its creator, black eyes going deeper and deeper...

"Todwendy." My voice turns sharp. "Be careful how you use this things. It's not just immobilizing, not if you trigger it with the proper..."

What lies beneath here?

"Naleva, what are you going on abo—"

I collapse, a wave of green debility disassociating bone from muscle. The ground comes up hard, and I feel volcanic crystals implant themselves in my cheek and jaw.

"Naleva!" She snatches the mask from my limp hand and helps me to my feet. "Is this a joke? You've cut your cheek." Her hand is tender in the oozing blood. "This ought to raise quite a bruise, too."

"I—I set off the enchantment."

"From just holding it? Impossible. You have to wear it."

"So you say, Tavenda. But I sure as hell didn't just faint from nerves!"

She draws back to look at me, as if reappraising.

"Well then. I knew you were hiding some sort of brilliance behind those speckly red eyes of yours."

"Don't exaggerate."

"I never exaggerate."

She keeps pulling out the mask as we continue, scrutinizing it the whole way back to Balmora.


	10. Chapter 10

I did dream of Todwendy, stirring towards consciousness as the tingling heat faded slowly away. But as I wiped the cloying sweat from my thighs, her image slurred into the waking dream that came next. I plunged my head into the mattress to bury it in true sleep, where it belonged, and the visitation followed me there. An impossibly tall frame of dark flesh hardened to muscle and sinew, topped by a golden mask haloed in obscuring light. The voice from above is warm and silky as we walk though a wedding procession of the dead, and my companion greets each of them in a light-hearted way, shutting me out of his one-sided exchanges. The blanket has moved to strangle me when I wake, bunched up around my waist and legs like Telvanni armor.

Upon finding the Lucky Lockup strangely dark and nearly empty the night before, I had delivered Antabolis' documents to Caius, leaving him the night to digest them. My dream woke me before any of the other guests, so I set out early for the bed-and-basket.

"This is good work, Naleva. Antabolis sent you an unenviable task, going to Arkngthand, and your success is very encouraging." Caius is shirtless and sugar-ragged again. Also, I never mentioned the ruins to him. "I do need to know the identity of that Redguard you set out with, however."

"Just a friend. Todwendy, although I've heard her give two other names before." Don't let this be an issue. Or even a topic of conversation.

"A few days here and you've made friends already? What is her affiliation?"

"Lately a contractor for House Hlaalu, but now a free agent. She is on her way out of the province, and also owed a favor to Antabolis." I meet his gaze at that, inwardly anxious to see how my skills have progressed. It's not the creation of the lie that tests you; it's the nerves needed to maintain it. Maybe Caius was a foolish choice of target for such—

"Very well, so long as you were discreet. Naleva, you have proven yourself willing and able to act on my orders, so I will continue the explanation I gave earlier. I mentioned—in a moment of weakness—the Emperor, because the Emperor is my _direct_ superior." Jewels o' Julianos, what a thing to say. "True, the Blades have their Grandmaster, but Uriel Septim is sufficiently concerned over the state of this island that he has split the Vvardenfell station off from provincial command. I now run the Blades' spy network here independently, and you are my personal charge."

"And is the Empire so short on snoops that they conscript them now? Hire them without bothering to say as much?"

"No, not generally." His docility before my prying speaks to the absurdity of the situation. "So far as I'm concerned, your purpose here has yet to be determined. In the meantime, you will have to accept what information I see fit to share. I understand that you had no prospects back in Cyrodiil and urge to you to continue in my service. I cannot answer for what happens to you otherwise." So he has my best interests in mind, combined with a bland indifference to my fate. The Blades. Scuttling Hell! That will take more time to chew over than Caius is likely to give me.

"Now that you are a novice in the Blades, and not just an informer, you may avail yourself of our information and service network. You can find safehouses across Vvardenfell, sources of news and, if you ask courteously, training. You may refer to a list of operatives that I keep with me, although obviously you cannot carry one around. If you visited Arille's Tradehouse after disembarking at Seyda Neen, you may have talked to Elone, the publican. She's my gatekeeper, although she never saw you coming, bureaucratic fiasco that that was."

"Don't I have to take an oath, or something?"

"I thought we might dispense with that, for now, since you won't be in any position to harm the Emperor. And I need you to fit into this province better than a native. You could have occasion to break any oath you make. Do we still see eye-to-eye?"

"Yes."

"Then take another two hundred septims, so you don't have to choose between poverty and progress. And hop on over to the Mages in town and get Sharn gra-Muzgob to fill in the gaps on the Nerevarine Cult."

"That name one more time?"

"Just ask for Sharn. She's smart, for an orc. You'll like the irritable old bat. She's always worried that the Temple will bust in and stick her in a fire. And worried with good reason. You can buy her trust with the skull in that bag on the table."

"A skull?"

"Don't be squeamish. It's long-dead. Or at least not too fresh. You can tell Sharn that I appreciate her cooperation immensely, and can guarantee her physical safety from the Temple, should she find herself exposed. Provided, of course..."

"Of course."

Sharn proves to synthesize peevishness and paranoia in novel, wholly unendearing ways. After some transparent hedging over the purpose of my visit, she accepts Caius' gift.

"You want to know about Nerevar? What a tuskache, that one! I only started studying him because he exemplifies the Temple's backwardness, not that certain cassock-stains back in Cyrodiil aren't far behind."

"I'm not sure I follow, gra-Muzgob."

"You know they turned Nerevar into a bonewalker? Their sainted king, a shambling husk in a tomb. Yet somehow the intricacies of life and the ethical pursuit of knowledge is an abomination whose practitioners must be killed. This here item shouldn't have come from a man like Cosades; it should be sold in the marketplace."

"No doubt. But in the meantime, you will honor his request for a dossier on the Nerevarine Cult?"

"Yes, yes, in a day or so. But if he is asking after Peakstar, you can tell him I know the same as he does."

"What is Peak Star?"

She raises a wiry eyebrow.

"Not a what. Peakstar is the latest of the False Incarnates, and the announcement of her death by the Ordinators has been a topic of debate these past days. The Temple hasn't produced a body. She may have died in prison, or she may still be alive somewhere, given her propensity to disappear and reemerge."

"I see. Cosades will gladly accept a dossier when you have it prepared, but for my own purposes..." I trail off in hesitation. "What's a False Incarnate?"

Sharn takes the illicit skull in one ponderous green hand and holds it up to her face, examining.

"An Ashlander, usually. One who claims to be Nerevar Reborn, in fulfillment of the prophecies. They're the reason for the Temple's persecution of the cult, because the reborn Nerevarine is supposed to overthrow the Tribunal as false gods, and restore the land to its roots in Resdayn and Veloth. It's bad news for the Great Houses too, and the Empire was only too happy to join in the prohibition, what with the stipulations concerning outlanders."

"So the Temple goes after the False Incarnates?"

"In a sly, merciful sort of way. Priests can be subversives, but Nerevarine pretenders are supposed to just be insane. So eventually the incarnates die chasing their prophecies or get stuck in a deep dark Indoril hole for the rest of their lives. Somewhat odd to have Nerevar's house imprisoning its own, don't you think? But if the cult has any purchase among the settled Dunmer, they keep it real quiet."

"So who was Peakstar?"

"A girl child who washed up on some ashland shore to be adopted by one tribe or another. She went into hiding for long periods, as the Temple has stepped up its repression every year for quite some time now. Persecution is mostly confined to the ranks of the faithful, and moreso the clergy itself, but the Nerevarine Cult is the lone exception. When the prophecies are so vague, any number of threatening figures could claim the title, and possibly an Ashlander army."

"Will you include the prophecies in the dossier?"

"Would that I could. Ashlander wisewoman interpret dreams and prophecies the way we interpret texts, and never write anything down. Most of the prophecies were lost when the oral chain broke down, although sometimes I wonder whether some of them were deliberately forgotten."

"How can they claim to adhere to prophecies that don't exist anymore?"

"They may exist somewhere, recorded by some Temple heretic, Telvanni scholar, or jealously guarded by a secretive mabrigash. Their rediscovery is a tantalizing thought." She tucks the skull into a small footlocker. "The False Incarnates all point to the one prophecy that is common knowledge. The Stranger."

She recited it for me then and there, wrapping her orcish tongue around with words with a certain relish. I'll put it down here without comment, except to say that I found some of it inexplicaly familiar. When I read it, I still hear a drum beating slow time, somewhere far off.

When earth is sundered, and skies choked black,

And sleepers serve the seven curses,

To the hearth there comes a stranger,

Journeyed far 'neath moon and star.

Though stark-born to sire uncertain

His aspect marks his certain fate.

Wicked stalk him, righteous curse him.

Prophets speak, but all deny.

Many trials make manifest

The stranger's fate, the curses' bane.

Many touchstones try the stranger

Many fall, but one remains.

Let me answer one it of verse with another, although I did not come across this other until a good deal afterward. When I read it, I instantly knew it to be the truth. The words transported me back to those moments when I first enter Vivec, on a mission from Caius Cosades. And yet they also speak to the nature of all cities, reminding me strongly of home, as my home is the truest city that exists. Now the shifting smells and wafting emotions of Nibennium and the Thief's city are hopelessly tangled in my mind. The former, with its white buildings emerging from the lake, and the latter, with its dusky cantons floating in the sea. Is it Vvardenfell imposing itself on my birthplace, a headstrong eastern conqueror? Or is it a piece of home extended to Vvardenfell as a gift, here to take root and flourish as a comforting transplantation. Either way, here is what Vivec has to say about his city:

'This is God's city, different from others. Cities from foreign countries put their denizens to sleep and walk to the star-wounded East to pay homage to me. The capital of the northern men, crusty with eon's ice, bows before Vivec the city, me it together.

'Self-thought streets rush through tunnel blood. I have rebuilt myself. Hyper eyed signposts along my traffic arm, soon to be an inner sea. My body is crawling with all gathered to see me rising up like a monolithic instrument of pleasure. My spine is the main road to the city that I am. Countless transactions are taking place in veins and catwalks and the roaming, roaming, roaming, as they roam over and through and add to me. There are temples erected along the hollow of my skull and I will ever wear them as a crown. Walk across the lips of God.

'They add new doors to me and I become effortlessly trans-immortal with the comings and goings and the stride-heat of the market where I am traded for, yell of the children hear them play, scoffed at, amused, desired, paid for in native coin, new minted with my face on one side and my city-body on the other. I stare with each new window. Soon I am a million-eyed insect dreaming.

'Red-sparking war trumpets sound like cattle in the ribcage of shuffling transit. The heretics are destroyed on the plaza knees. I flood over into the hills, houses rising like a rash, and I never scratch.

'I raise lanterns to light my hollows, lend wax to the thousands the candlesticks that bear my name again and again, the name innumerable, shutting in, mantra and priest, god-city, filling every corner with the naming name, wheeled, circling, running river language giggling with footfalls mating, selling, stealing, searching, and worry not ye who walk with me.'

His boasting is unwarranted in one respect. Foreign cities,even those worthy of legs, do not come here to pay homage. Vivec is not renowned outside Morrowind,and is even looked down on in Mournhold. They do not speak of its glories in far-off lands, and we from Cyrodiil are likely as not to curl our lips in condescension. Even true-eyed travelers, once back in more familiar settings, will not sing its praises. Rather than hopelessly attempting to convey sentiments that are not welcome, they will simply offer a wan smile. 'A queer old settelement, that. And its denizens are queerer still.

But they know.

Alike as I, they know. We also know that the task of description is impossible, but I'm no ordinary mortal, so here goes.

It begins in the line of snorting, stamping guar. Tossing their piled burdens to and fro, cursed by their handlers, the caravan beasts feel the stirrings of the pilgrims. The transient faithful have more eagerness even than the tattered blight refugees, who are jaded, or the Ordinator patrolmen, who exhibit no signs of sentience. So it is the pilgrims who feel it rising from the Ascadian mists, their destination drawing nearer at hand as the netch (and the hazard of attack by one of the females) thin out overhead. The road becomes straighter, growing firm underfoot. Then, just when anticipation has begun to fray at the edges from uncertainty's sabotage, the way sprouts flagstones beneath you. The road is paved now, and seconds later, Vivec announces itself.

Initially, of course, it's the Foreign Quarter, looming overhead with its tiers and buttresses and happy lanterns, taller than Telvanni towers and Imperial fortresses. Outlanders are no longer confined to its riotous bulk, but the city with all its games and workings remain rigged against the non-Dunmer. Such interlopers tend to stick to the Hlaalu canton for business, the Arena for pleasure, and otherwise eschew the Dunmeri depths of extortionary shopkeepers, unfriendly cornerclubs, and now the odd Sixth House butcher.

But forget the Foreign Quarter. I am farther ahead of myself than a Colovian youth with his first sheep. Ludicrous to post that the city should uncloak itself piece by piece, unfolding before you in any logical, linear fashion. No, Vivec hits you full in the face, pouncing down all at once so before you know to come up for air, it's buried in you up to the hilt. No sooner than you see the bridge, and the first canton's facade, then you are in deep, time and memory and sensation bleeding together so that you never cross the city's threshold. That moment is lost, transporting you immediately to the center of enthrallment. Retrospectively, the Foreign Quarter offers a brief oasis of calm (or at least a more familiar, Western sort of urban chaos), but the first glance towards the forest of seaborne cantons to the south wipes all comfort away. Vivec now has you.

A tumult of banners, purple and crusty red, hung from rib bone sky-bridges and emblazoned with skeletal saints in garish black. The air is crushing, an unrelenting onslaught of gongs and discordant trumpets that in time prove to emanate from your own head. The air is steam, rising from the dazzling canyon between cantons that is the main thoroughfare. It is all instantly too much, certainly too much to write in order. The way the sea reeks but cannot penetrate into your overloaded senses, the canal impossibly clogge with a bloodstream of gondolas, skiffs, swimmers, reed-rafts, driftwood, silt striders, itself merely the living lagoon hemmed in by the cantons that surely most be floating there in place around it. The entire city, swirling with sound, is suffused with that water, pumping by God's will through every inch of it, streaming from the canton's base (is this the source of the sound that is so arresting?) in torrents. The city steams with it, and the cookfires, and the rising dust, and the incense, and the music, and the cavorting ghosts, and the ash of roads two hundred miles away.

A millennial butch netch—strider-sized, hung with banners and baskets and saddles—swings past, its soulfire lanterns blinking faith and revelry at you. Passing by your waistworks ledge, the floating vessel makes for High Fane an brushes through a tapestry to the Mother, showering the walkways below with ingrained ash. You realize that the city not only _is_ life, but it hosts life in incalculable abundance. Sentience is everywhere, biped and teeming, on second glance independent from the towering bone metropolis that holds it above the waters. Mortals crowd the streets, packed as they are into narrow ribbons by water and hard, vertical earth. What are the cantons made of? Something too monolithic and imperishable to be altered, surely. Why else should the inhabitants stand for such congestion? That is why timber scaffolding grows below the waistworks like scrawny vines and lichens, climbing up the slanted sides towards the plaza domes. The canals are made narrower the same way, as each canton grows skirts of docks, marriage beds where the gondolas mate with the city and allow it to carry on. The cantons are not inviolable after all. Look how the tiny people burrow in their sides, excavating new homes in the earthy flesh of their god.

The roads are too much. Even the wide thoroughfares, mere boatlengths above water-level, keep pinning you to the walls, bending you over the railing to stare down at the rushing water traffic. Yes, better to travel down there,below the streets and way from these pacing Ordinator statues, hawking merchants, wall-scaling children, shuffling slaves, levitating Armigers, rattling handcarts, delirious pilgrims, holy whores. The tumult down in the lagoon is worse, if anything, but at least there half the chaos is hidden out of sight above, and your fate is not your own. A boatman will control your movements for a few coins, relieving you from the exhausting burden of self-preservation.

In a brief lucid moment, your rational mind notes that House Hlaalu, ever saavy and ascendant, has much cheaper fares funneling traffic to its own canton. Redoran and Telvanni stand apart from all this life, the former cut off by the insatiable Arena, the latter isolated by choice. But was not your business in the Foreign Quarter? Silly outlander. Your gondola heads back at the brink of St. Delyn and St. Olms, cantons sporting the largest dome-statues of any other other in their industrious, grit-covered humility. It looks as if the crowding only gets worse with every step south, at least until the glimpsed serenity of Vivec's Temple, and the great body of stone hanging above it, circled with scaffolding. In the distance there is the warrior-poet's steppe puzzle pyramid streaming water, an the brazen violation of Ebonheart beyond it, now fueling half the city with its harbor of oceangoing ships, even as it drains the island of Scarab's blood and miner's sweat.

Heading north again, you see that the quest for space could not be satisfied by creaky wooden additions to the cantons themselves. On the shore where the outermost flanks of the city almost kiss the Ascadian grass, stone ledges have risen. Wharves and terraces play host to newer houses on space reclaimed from the sea. Vvardenfell makes itself felt there, for I see mudbrick compound walls embracing Redoran shell architecture and Hlaalu roof gardens. In the haze, it is hard to see how far Vivec stretches inland. By some law or unspoken agreement, none of the additions come near the main approach to the Foreign Quarter, except for the shanty town around the small port at the northeast. No law or divine force can keep a sailor from his brothels, and though this place may give a CiCi pause (there, I admit it), it is not omnipotent.

We dock beneath the north face of the canton, providing the first moment of solace from this mental din. I pause on the rope-bridge gangway, looking out over the narrow strip of water that separates the City of Swords from the Ascadian mainland. Everything under that dim ridgeline horizon is Vvardenfell's breadbasket, with every green crop known to Morrowind flourishing in the dark volcanic tefra. Legions of beastfolk slaves tend it all, their presence rankling most every outlander with a conscience, exposing the Empire's legalistic custodians for the bazaar cutthroats they really are. At the same time, every pair of clawed or scaled hands in manacles is balm for the offended sensibilities of Dunmer traditionalists, an assurance that Dres and Indoril will keep the peace. I prefer to devote my attention to the netch instead, great amiable bags of noxious purple gas that offered great entertainment on the strider ride south. The males are peaceful, and dumb enough to mistake you for a small shrub and caress you with their tentacles. A swift swat will do for that behavior, although trying it with a betty netch will get you maimed, strangled and then drowned.

Up to the Foreign Quarter. I pick my moment and dart through the hordes of pack guar, gaining the ramp up to the waistworks. Each canton was built (if they were ever _built_) with plenty of wasted space, and the slanting passageway has doors set awkwardly into the walls near the halfway point, where someone has found room for a modest (albeit lightless) dwelling. The waistworks aren't exactly sunswept either, part of the reason that the exterior is so frenzied. Every outlander organization with any sway has been begging to drill windows or light holes in the walls for years now. Not a chance. The mercurial Dunmer may prize the Mephalian aspects of their society, but some laws were not meant to be broken. Every true Velothi knows that the mountain's moods may shift and the ash may come again. The city's leadership will not tolerate even this den of faithless outlanders becoming exposed.

I should mention why I'm here. Much as Cosades appreciated my findings in Balmora, he pulled two more names from his Blades' bag of wagging tongues and sent me to arrange meetings. It's the Nerevarine and Sixth House cults again, presumably in the hopes that new informants will offer new information. The first is Khajiit with an unpronounceable name and underworld connections. There is no surefire way of finding her, so I'll leave that for last. The second is a librarian in the Temple archives, and asking her about the Nerevarine will be sticking my head in the tiger's mouth. Best to start with a contact mentioned on the last page of Antabolis' dossier, a helpful suggestion for a source on the Nerevar worship among the Ashlanders. With the initial shock of Vivec wearing off, I find his Black Shalk Cornerclub hangout in minutes.

This may be the Foreign Quarter, but this place feels native. Much moreso than the South Wall or Lucky Lockup, although not nearly as hostile as the Council Club Tong nest. It is a little tense in here, though, and it can't be explained by the usual mid afternoon stillness of a half-empty bar. The place wraps around the staircase into a dim little alcove. By the alit tallow candle I see an Argonian, seated in that particular way of the tailed and bow-legged. There's a cup of Sujamma that might well have seen yesterday, and a hauberk of intricate green scalemail on a bench in the corner. I think I've seen its like on a Nibenese flotilla guard.

"Excuse my boldness..." Not even a hint of reaction for two heartbeats, and then Huleeya of the Morag Tong swivels his head towards me, a deliberate, measured movement. "...but are you Huleeya?"

"Yes. Much good may it do you. I am preoccupied by my own affairs." He looks away.

"I am Naleva of Polefel," he can't stop me taking a seat, anyway. "Are you waiting to meet someone, or are your affairs of the contemplative, alcoholic sort?"

"Truthfully, Naleva, I have an appointment at the establishment of a friend. Why have you sought me out; I do not know you."

Is Cosades' name worth anything here? Better to leave that out.

"I was directed to you by a friend."

"And which friend was this?"

"Hasphat Antabolis." If he has heard the name, he will remember it, striking specimen that it is.

"Ah, the fighting gentlemen. We never did begin correspondence, although he solicited me for information." Eye contact now, reassessment by a glimmering reptilian void. Will he take me for a sellsword? The staff sits propped against Caius' east wall; the blade at my belt. "Truthfully, Naleva, those troublesome fools stand in the way of my chosen errand this day."

He gestures with the horn at the end of his stout, as effective as a pointing finger. So that's why the bar is so tense. Three Mazte-brave Dunmer are waiting at a single small table by the door, bombarding the alcove with dark glances.

"The three on the end?"

"I doubt they will let me leave unharmed. Or if so, they may mean to follow me out." Only one of the three looks like a fighter, and none are armed any more heavily than I am. "They act on no one's orders, and have no intention to rob."

"They don't like the sight of a free Argonian, then?"

"Verily."

"How long have they had you hemmed in here?"

"No longer than my drink has lasted. There is little honor in self-defense, Naleva, and I do not wish to trouble my friend Saralis by fighting in his club. I would be happy to speak with you at Jobasha's bookstore, were you to dissuade these irksome fellows. Otherwise there must be violence."

"Allow me to try, and I will see you to this Jobasha." A curt nod of acknowledgment, betraying neither gratitude nor skepticism.

Well, then. How best to approach this? None of the three is attractive enough (although that's can be a hard judgment to make with Vvardenfell men) to make a feminine sort of distraction credible. But do any of them look conceited enough to be fooled by it? The two with the tough, badlands haircuts appear to be lackeys, in fact, and their traveling clothes double as armor. Two ideas, then, for an assault on the immaculately-dressed man in charge.

I swagger over to their table, no point playing any character other than the ones I look like.

"Lizards these days! You lads'll want to hear this one, by Azura!" I plop down at their table as unstoppably as Todwendy and motion at the barman for four drinks. "I was just over there in the corner looking to fill some positions and would you know it, I found an Argonian what doesn't want to pull weeds! And I thought we had an economy 'round here! Three only know what his type is doing to support himself without a rice paddy 'unner him." Too late I realize that my whole bearing reeks of Cyrodiil. Even my accent has plunged deep down into Polefel, as if I was six years old again. It can't fail to offend this lot. True enough, the drinks are too slow in coming and I receive only a contemptuous glare.

"Who asked you here, half-caste? Even if some eggfarmer slob did your mother an honor, she wasn't supposed to keep the brat. I thought even outlanders had shame."

Ouch. There's no way laugh that one off believably. But too late, I'm already making friends as if the words never crossed his lips.

"Just lost a bit of color under the setting sun is all, you know?" Mazte. Thank Sanguine. "You boys don't look too black about the jowls yourself." A desperate laugh. "Say, I think that lizard over there is on his way out, and this may be a decent public house after all, not a Westerner in sight."

"Except you." No mistaking that tone.

"I've been off the island a spell, I'll admit, but what say we all have a drink together while the swamprot airs out." This isn't working. My bigot's credentials aren't passing muster and what's more, Huleeya hasn't budged. I pull out my coinpurse, heavy with Caius' allowance. "Or if you're not in the drinking mood, come see my master and he'll put a couple of these in your pocket." Big mistake.

"You think to insult the Hlaalu with your scrapings?" the bossman roars. I hear Huleeya's chair scraping on the floor.

Looks like we have to do this now. I let the purse slip through my fingers, catching it by the trailing string to whip around and slam a pound of coins into a livid Dunmeri jaw. At the same time, I'm across the table with my left hand to grab the bossman by his mane and yank him face first into a mug mug of Mazte. Potsherds scatter in all directions, and I kick away from the table, overturning it. Huleeya comes down on the third thug from somewhere in the vicinity of the ceiling, tail and claws thrashing. The next few instants are _knee, pommel _and _chair, _then pommel again to lay two of them out on the floor, groaning and curling.

Huleeya draws his knife, but only to cut away a coinpurse and toss it to the stunned bartender. Our three victims are all bleeding slightly, none of them wounded by any real weapon. Todwendy was right. Good instincts. Huleeya regains his initiative long before me, and leads the way out into the waistworks.

_Here we teach you to spar,_ Gallenus' hired drillmaster said. _So that perhaps one day you have the beginnings of the notion to defend yourself. _I clutched my staff with pride, the victor at sunset of the last day. _But I do not teach you to fight, make no mistake. To fight as the warrior fights, is nine parts out of ten mere impulse. The will to inflict harm without hesitation or remorse, coupled with training, makes a warrior. Today I teach you to spar, but in a fight between commoners it is the will to violence that prevails, not size, not speed, not always even skill. Remember that. _

Fighting is impulse, and I think my 'impulse' just impressed an agent of the Morag Tong. Hopefully he never finds out that I impersonated one recently, or my impulse will have to fall victim to his expertise.

Mercifully, Jobasha's Bookstore is just across the waistworks, leaving no time for the commotion in the Black Shalk to attract a crowd. My relief fades somewhat as we storm into the hallway of dust and bookish quiet only to come fact-to-face with a seated Ordinator, his gold mask perpetually scowling. Huleeya seems to have expected it, however, and carries on down the cramped corridor unphased. This place looks like more books than I have seen in my life, probably because the premises are so small. Even the precise assassin before me is in danger of upsetting something with a swing of his tail. The tomes become sumptuous as we descend, finishing in a square little room that doubles as Jobasha's sleeping quarters. Huleeya nods to the trim, coffee-maned Khajiit dicing hackle-lo in the corner.

"You have brought a guest. Well met."

"This is Naleva of Polefel." The quintessential courteous growl of an Argonian. "She rendered assistance and cut short my lateness."

The bookseller stands to bow.

"And what manner of lateness? Jobasha is honored to meet friends of Huleeya, but assuage his curiosity."

"The lateness of belligerent Velothi, at the Black Shalk, no less."

"This one wonders, if the meaning of the words 'foreign quarter,' so opaque?"

"It is not the Imperials who find themselves assaulted." Huleeya turns to me. "You must tolerate some further lateness, friend Jobasha. I am honorbound to treat with Naleva here."

"Is there some place we can talk in private?"

"Jobasha's is most private, and he can be trusted with greater secrets than yours and mine. We do not wish for the Ordinator to overhear, besides."

"I noticed that fellow on the way in. How's _he _for business? Much of a reader?"

The Khajiit proprietor cuts in.

"The Temple has posted a guard here for this one's own protection. But perhaps better to ask whether he is not here instead to protect others from Jobasha."

"My friend is known for his difficult politics," Huleeya supplies.

"I imagine serving the Morag Tong as an Argonian is difficult enough itself."

"For onlookers, maybe. We are a house of honor, and honor belongs to the mortal, not the race. I do not, of course, carry out writs on native Dunmer, but there are myriad other ways to serve. It is a privilege to serve the conscience of Morrowind, and be the instrument that spares its people the pointless fratricidal struggles of other lands." Somehow's the Great Houses' ability to covertly murder each other does keep the peace, it's true. "But is this what you wished to speak of? It is not the proper way to approach the Morag Tong."

"Forgive me, my business is something else entirely. Hasphat Antabolis referred you to me as a source on the Nerevarine Cult. I would be grateful for any insight you can share, in writing or in reference to useful documents."

Jobasha appears to be listening in with great pleasure, feline tongue crushing fragrant hackle-lo leaf noisily.

"An unexpected request, easily satisfied. In recognition of your ready help, Jobasha and I will prepare a summary for you. By sunset tomorrow, if that is acceptable."

"It is ideal. What can you tell me from memory?"

"The Nerevarine Cult refers to a very different figure than the Temple's Indoril Nerevar, incomprehensibly so, if you do not know Ashlander history." He makes eye contact briefly, as Argonians often learn not to do, inquiring whether or not to continue. I nod. "Nerevar's leadership over the First Council was the last moment of parity between settled Dunmer tribes, or Chimer in those days, and the nomads."

"Chimer."

"So easy to forget," Jobasha chimes in. "This was before the curse. Sainted Nerevar had the skin of an Altmer."

"Or so they say," Huleeya continues. "Nerevar swore on Azura's One-Clan-Under-Moon-and-Star ring that he would honor the ways of the Spirits and rights of the Land, and the Ashlanders loved him for it. They followed him to war against the Dwemer and the Nords, and their hero Sul(?) fought at his side. But—and here is where the story diverges from settled history—the Tribunal murdered Nerevar during the aftermath of the battle at Red Mountain, blinding Sul for what he witnessed. And the new regime did not respect Nerevar's promises. The Great Houses grew in power, forcing the Ashlanders into the poorest and most hostile wastes. The sources only refer to them as 'Ashlanders' in the centuries after Nerevar's death."

"The Tribunal killed their own saint?"

"Every Ashlander is sure of it, and they reject the Three as false gods and usurpers of the Daedric ancestors. In their eyes, such unnatural lifetimes can only be signs of profane sorcery or necromancy. Now they look for Nerevar's return for the restoration of their ancient rights and religious traditions. In truth, nothing less will bring them back from the brink these modern times have brought them to. Between the Blight, the colonization of Vvardenfell and Imperial mining interests, they are a people entering their last days. No wonder they wait for Nerevar to cast down the Tribunal and expel the outlanders, even if such promises are not well supported by the prophecies, as I hear."

"I read the Stranger," I cut in, "but have found little hard information on the others."

"There's your problem. Prophecies and hard information seldom associate. The whole tradition of Nerevarine lore hinges on a handful of wisewomen and their mystic visions, and is subject to misinterpretation, politics and wishful thinking. I know little on this subject." He accept two cups of tea from Jobasha and hands one to me. "Although the Temple tolerates the Ashlander variant of ancestor worship, they decry dream sendings as superstition or madness. Their objection to the Nerevarine Cult is so strong that they secured the prohibition of it by the Imperial Commission of the Occupation." He looks at me and grins. "When was the last time you heard of the Empire outlawing a religion?"

"Cyrodiil never did meet a god it didn't like."

"I should mention the False Incarnates. You have heard of Peakstar?"

"I heard of her death."

"We shall see on that point. But there is a long line of Nerevarines stretching back towards the First Era. All have either died in pursuit of prophecy or been imprisoned by the Temple. Killed, sometimes. The Temple notes that these False Incarnates discredit the Nerevarine prophecies, while the Ashlanders view them as proof. They speak of a Cavern of the Incarnates, where the spirits of the Failed Incarnates dwell. The Nerevarine cult is a mystical faith, and it glorifies, rather than shrinks from, contradictions. "

"An admirable summary," Jobasha applauds, as if signifying the close of the conversation. "We shall draft the written account on Jobasha's finest paper."

"My thanks. I won't take up any more of your time... however, I now have the unenviable task of tracking down a Thieves Guild operative by the name of... Addhiranirr."

"One cat must needs have one eye on another, yes?" Jobasha winks at me. "I have heard of this Addhiranirr, and she is in town. Her continuing evasion of a Census and Excise agent is a topic if growing mirth."

"So she is in hiding?"

"Sorry to say. But naturally the canalworks would be the usual place to look."

I thank Huleeya warmly and depart, wishing I could complete all my missions with the violent simplicity of a barroom brawl.

"Why does Cosades think me learned?" Addhiranirr purrs at me through the darkness of an Olms canton sewer tunnel. We are on our way up to the overcrowded canalworks slum, now that her bureaucratic pursuer has departed. Todwendy herself would have applauded my falsehoods, so ably I rid Vivec of him.

"So you truly have never heard of the Sixth House?"

"You have come from Caius, so of course he tells you all about Addhiranirr, how she is a friend of Caius, and who does little things for Caius, but who knows nothing of this cult, not even in a sugar dream."

"And not the Nerevarine either, I take it."

"Yes, Addhiranirr knows nothing about this Nerevarine cult, because it is just silly superstition. So you tell Caius this. Nobody in her right mind pays any attention to this nonsense. Prophecies and ancient heroes reborn and other silliness. Fuzzy tales for little kitties."

"Caius explicitly told me that your activities as a smuggler would have brought you into contact with the Sixth House."

"Contact! The very word, yes, yes. Smuggling has."

Damn cats.

"I though you said you knew nothing."

"Nothing is what this one knows! No one knows about the Sixth House. But Addhiranirr will tell you about smuggling. Some smart smugglers are suddenly too busy for their old clients, because they have a new employer, the Sixth House, who pays _very_ well."

"Go on."

"But what do they smuggle now? Addhiranirr doesn't know, because they are very secret. And this is odd, because these smugglers are always loud and bragging, and now they hush up like fat-bellied kitties full of sweet-meats."

"You think they take on new cargo now? What kind of timeframe?"

"Months. A year. Maybe more."

"And could you identify some of these smart smugglers."

"Even for friend Caius, this is too much to ask. But Addhiranirr will say that the _smart _smugglers like the Bitter Coast, in the south."

We meet at the top of the canalworks ladder, and the Khajiit looks at me expectantly.

"I have no further questions."

"Walk on warm sands, Dunmer."

"And you." An interesting expression for Vvardenfell, where warm sands to to mean the ashlands in a mountain wind. Addhiranirr's contributions are slightly disappointing, although I suppose the bit about smuggling is new information, and more on the order of Blades intelligence work. For all his helpfulness, Huleeya may as well have been another academic.

Caius, who seemed to anticipate my paying a lot of bribes, provided a hefty stipend for Vivec, so I spend the night in a plaza inn. St. Olms is fairly cheap anyhow, and I should get used to staying at places like this all-Dunmer cornerclub, if I'm to stay in this line of work.

At this point, I no longer have any idea _why_ I decided to stay in said line of work. Although the events, even the words (I fill in some blanks myself) of those days are clear in my mind, my inner thoughts are not. Naleva of Polefel had a mindset that is gone now, and I can only speculate. Why did I follow Cosades' orders, accepting my non-consensual induction into one of Tamriel's most professional and secretive institutions? Put the thought out of your mind that I was flattered or overawed. No, Naleva of those days should have balked at such coercion, even the relatively gentle treatment she received one on Vvardenfell. Pragmatic survival is the other option, yet I should have railed against it to some degree, rather than cooperating so sanguinely. I'll suffice with the unsatisfying answer that my life as Naleva of CiCi Polefel ended that day in the Lockbox District, and away from the city and the life with Gallenus' foundlings, I had no other existence but what the Empire threw at me. Caius' orders gave me purpose, which was of little importance, they stimulated old skills, which was gratifying, and they staved off the necessity of finding some manner of life on this bizarre rock, which was paramount.

Dire thoughts to fall asleep to, and of course dire dreams resulted. Once again the emaciated marionette with the powerful limbs, and the golden mask on top. _There are many rooms in the house of the Master. Be easy, for from the hands of your enemies I have delivered you._ And the awful, blinding music began again. When I woke, my face was covered in tears from the beauty of it.


	11. Chapter 11

So that's number two. I hope I'm not getting my own touch of prophecy here. A morning Mazte makes the dream easier to forget. Helps with facing the Vivec traffic as well, although High Fane is right across the water there. Last stop in Vivec is the Temple's library, where a priestess-librarian friend of Caius' is expecting me. And for the first time, it's a sneak job. No taking to the robes.

The tranquility of High Fane is enough to take you aback. Cross the bridge and the noise of Vivec recedes to the north fast than you can walk. The cantons are still there, and the banners and floating netch, but for the first time you can hold the city away from yourself, examining it at length and at leisure. That's the first time I really began to become accustomed to the place, standing there watching the canals wink at me. The Temple grounds are plenty crowded, but the Dunmer here are mostly silent, pilgrims moving around in knots to the various statues and shrines. This early in the morning, the Ministry of Truth casts its shadow away over the water, so it's easy to forget its presence. Ships slide in an out of Ebonheart like a collection of individual paintings, stark white against the citadel's tower (which rivals Vivec's pyramid in height) and the dragon statue of pure ebony on the docks. A piece of work, that sculpture, standing in front of the East Empire Company's offices reminding all and sundry why the Empire is really here.

Caius doesn't want to mention Milo's name to anyone, so he has provided detailed instructions to the library. There's also a bit of scarab shell that apparently serves as a scholar's pass, although once again some books (from Jobasha) will help me look the part. No one challenges me at the entrance to the Hall of Wisdom. Passing into the foundations of High Fane's triple structure that resembles so much Telvanni headgear, I realize that the name is apt. This really is just a hallway, narrow and unadorned, with side passages and ramps (what do the Dunmer have against stairs?) branching off. Second floor, second right. Asking directions won't do, and I don't want to want betray my foreignness, so let's get this on the first pass, shall we?

And damnit, I walk too far, distracted by a middle-aged with plaited hair and the winking glass armor of the Buoyant Armigers. He halts upon seeing me, his face suddenly transformed by some inner wave of mirth. Nonplussed, I receive a deep bow in which there is no trace of irony, and he glides away chanting verse. No one else in the hall seems the wiser for it, and I find the correct turn in puzzlement.

For the largest public archive next to Mournhold (and not sat on by the Telvanni), this does not look much like a library. Jobasha's has more books, and I realize that the floor has been marked up by dozens of shelves recently removed. Some of the open space now plays host to statues, prayer fonts and furniture. Ordinators flank the entry door, and a wizened priest whose robe supplies most of his body weight takes my shell fragment with a grunt. While he scribbles in a clean new ledger, I have a few seconds to look about the library. Waiting until he nods at me to proceed garners a little more time after that. The place is nigh on deserted, except for a willowy woman in a blue robe just beyond the foyer. Sitting motionless on a broad table with a dilapidated scroll and some prayer beads in her hands, it is definitely my contact. Copper hair and copper eyes, just like Caius said.

I approach, head scanning the shelves for the benefit of the Ordinators, but eyes fixed unerringly on the informant. Mehra Milo has a face that withdrawn and sad. The copper in her eyes could be seen twenty paces across the room, but so far as it extends to her hair it is a worn-out metal, left out in the weather for tool long. If it could turn green, it would. She notices me briefly, dropping her legs from the chair to the floor so her robe is not in quite so much disarray. The somber look in her faces comes through more strongly. Although she's clearly as sheltered as any Ascadian sweetlander, for a moment I'm back on that ashlands plateau overlooking the Odai, in the grey-blue evening. Now I'm close enough that the look in my eyes in unmistakable. The idea dawns on her. She stands fully, tucking the scroll into a hidden pocket with the beads wrapped in one loose fist.

"Mehra Milo. I was told you could show me the Tract of Saint Rilms."

"Certainly. I won't be able to attend you personally, but I will let you down into the lower archives. A novice will collect you from the waiting room and bring you to the viewing chamber after that." Her voice has the soft, distant quality you would expect, but her face is now full of tension. I follow her to the back of the library, where she unlocks a door and ushers me down a steeply inclined passage. After a swift look over her shoulder, she speeds after me.

"Caius sent you?" She makes the inquiry in a conspiratorial whisper that is almost girlish.

"Of course. He has some questions." Somehow I have ended up leading her along, even though I don't know where to go.

"Do you work for him? We can talk in the room at the end of this hall." All languidness of earlier gone, she walks damned fast, pressing me forward along the narrow corridor. Not knowing what else to do when reaching our destination, I open the door outward, and she slips around the side, robes brushing against my leg, and enters the room first.

"Close the door, there." The tiny room is tomb-dark, and she caresses the lone candle until it sparks into life, revealing an additional exit on each wall. "This is the waiting room for the closed archives, but we won't be disturbed here. What is your name?"

"Naleva of Polefel. Caius Cosades sent me." I'll repeat it, if it will put her at ease.

"So soon? I trust him with my life, but—nevermind. You'll need a copy of the 'Progress of Truth.' It will tell you everything—"

"Hold on. I don't quite follow." She looks relieved to be cut off. "Caius sent me to find information on the Nerevarine cult. I am collecting sources on the ashlander Incarnates and oral prophecies."

"Oh." She sits down at the table, clasping her hands together and resting her chin on them. "On that count I know what any scholar does. But the Nerevarine cult isn't just among the ashlanders. Some of the faithful recognize the validity of the prophecies as well." How carefully she speak now, no longer remotely flustered.

"Go on."

"The Dissident Priests, a persecuted group of heretics, mostly in hiding. The proscribed book 'Progress of Truth' describes their beliefs, and should tell Caius everything he needs to know."

"A proscribed book? Where can I obtain it?"

Her voice drops immediately. Copper candlelight in her eyes.

"I have a copy here, but it's too risky with the Ordinators sniffing about. A safer plan would be to search the Foreign Quarter markets. Some booksellers ignore Temple bans on outlawed books for profits or principles."

"Security is tight around here, isn't it?"

She hesitates.

"Caius sent you, so I suppose you already... I do not care for Temple politics. But I have read 'Progress of Truth,' and it troubles me. I have friends, former priests, who have gone into hiding, so I am bound to come to the attention of the Ordinators. I am careful, but I'm no agent, like you or Caius." The prayer beads come out again.

"You know Caius' occupation?"

"Of course. He was—is a dear friend. He may be a Westerner, and an Emperor's man, but he admires the Temple's better traditions, and sees its falling virtues as a tragedy, as do I." She looks past my shoulder and shifts abruptly in her seat. "It doesn't make you a heretic to distrust those Ordinators, and their power. Or even to know that the way the Tribunal tells their history isn't meant to be literally true." I seem to have led her on to some sore point, and her shadowed faces becomes alluring as she argues with herself. "The ashlanders call them false gods, but the Dissident Priests—well, they just seek the truth, is all. Because the Temple is still all we have. No one else really cares for the poor, even if the higher-ups live like princes... charity truly is what the Temple has stood for, ever since..."

"But the Dissident Priests are being hunted."

"Yes. I suppose there's not much else they can really do. Heresy weakens the faith of the people, on the wane ever since the Armistice, and faith is what sustains the Ghostfence. Every apostasy is another day of Blight and—and they stuck Malur Omayn up there in the _Ministry._" Her apologetic sentence ends in anger, a sudden reversal. "The situation is bad, but the Temple is only destroying itself by giving free reign to its militant wing. This repression can't go on." She stands. "Find that book for Caius, Naleva, and tell him not to send anyone else to visit me. I may have to go into hiding soon." Mehra's gaze drops to the floor, and her lashes lie across the bruised circles beneath her eyes. "If it comes to it, and we lose contact, I will leave a message under the name Amaya."

She looks back up all at once, and seems taken aback by how intently I was watching her.

"Should I leave first, or should you?"

"You should wait here for several hours, and read those books you have there. Just don't let anyone see the title of 'Nerevar Moon-and-Star.'"

"Is this one banned as well?"

"No, but it is suspicious. I hope I have been helpful. Farewell, Naleva of Polefel."

"My thanks, Mehra Milo."

Not the proper address for a priestess, maybe, but I don't think she noticed as she swept out the door in a flap of robes. Oh well, stuck in the dark now with lots of reading to do, tracing the lines of copper tresses with the fingers of my left hand.

"Really, Jobasha is surprised that you did not buy this from him yesterday." I pocket the illicit book, handing the Khajiit a sizable portion of Caius' stipend.

"I did not know if it's existence yesterday," I reply. "I am still new to this province, and Caius gives me little in the way of instruction. Is Huleeya around?"

"Huleeya left on a call. This one completed the notes he left, on the Nerevarine. It is rather elementary, but may your master find it illuminating."

"Excellent. That's saved me some time."

Jobasha retrieves a packet from his bedside table, and I see that he has bound the pages with brightly-colored thread.

"Should Naleva ever aid another of Jobasha's friends, perhaps one that cannot in fact help themselves, or should she ever need information, come back again."

"I am bound for Balmora, but I'll be sure to keep your establishment in mind. Thank you for the help."

"By strider?"

"Pardon?"

"Naleva returns to the stonewood by strider, yes?"

"Well, I suppose."

"Take a good look at the ground beneath you as you travel."

Watching the ground in Ascadia mostly means watching the slaves. The strider route takes us past Pelagiad (some county in High Rock is missing its hamlet) and the western areas where single-family homesteads predominate, but we pass close enough to Orvas Dren's plantation to see a round thousand of them. None of the strider's other passengers think anything of it, even the Cyrodils and the lone Khajiit. The Empire seems to get on well enough with slavery, simply outlawing the trade and bizarrely demanding that the practice no longer be restricted by law to beastfolk. What with half the Ashlanders fleeing the Blight ending up as barely-paid laborers in ebony and glass mines, they've introduced a passing approximation of the practice themselves. Maybe this is what Huleeya meant by mentioning Jobasha's unpopular opinions. I just didn't know that abolitionism was unpopular. 'Bad for business,' I imagine the Nibenean next to me saying. When Caius organizes the strider trips (the costliness of on-demand transport is just beginning to dawn on me), there aren't all these ornery companions crowding the cockpit. After Vivec, I really need some space. My brief visit has put Balmora up on a homely pedestal in my mind.

I take up the Dissident Priests' book to escape from the sight of chattel and bondage. _On the Feeding and Mating Habits of the Kagouti,_ reads the cover. I suppose it could be worse. The Dissident Priests are apparently efficient, empathetic souls: they have provided an abstract. I like them better all the time, even if they can't all be as interesting as Mehra Milo. I won't blame you if you skip some of this, seeing as I put it into practice later.

1. Temple doctrine claims the Tribunal's apotheosis was miraculously achieved through questing, virtue, knowledge, testing, and battling with Evil; Temple doctrine claims their divine powers and immortality are ultimately conferred as a communal judgment by the Dunmer ancestors [including, among others, the Good Daedra, the prophet Veloth, and Saint Nerevar]. Dissident Priests ask whether Dagoth Ur's powers and the Tribunal powers might ultimately derive from the same source—Red Mountain. Sources in the Apographa suggest that the Tribunal relied on profanely enchanted tools to achieve godhood, and that those unholy devices were the ones originally created by the ungodly Dwemer sorcerer Kagrenac to create the False Construct Numidium.

2. The Dissident Priests say that the Temple has always maintained a public face [represented by the Heirographa - the "priestly writings"] and a hidden face [represented by the Apographa - the "hidden writings"]. The public account portrays the actions of the Tribunal in a heroic light, while the hidden writings reveal secrets, untruths, inconsistencies, conflicting accounts and varying interpretations which hint at darker and less heroic motives and actions of the Tribunes. In particular, conflicting accounts of the battle at Red Mountain raise questions about the Tribunal's conduct, and about the source of their subsequent apotheosis. Also, there is good evidence that the Tribunal have been concealing the true nature of the threat posed by Dagoth Ur at Red Mountain, misleading the people about the Tribunal's ability to protect Morrowind from Dagoth Ur, and concealing a recent dramatic diminishing of the Tribunal's magical powers.

3. Ashlander tradition does not place the Tribunal at Red Mountain, and holds that the Dwemer destroyed themselves, rather than that Nerevar destroyed them. Ashlander tradition further holds that Nerevar left Dagoth Ur guarding the profane secrets of Red Mountain while Nerevar went to confer with the Grand Council [i.e., the Tribunal], that Nerevar died at the conference [not of his wounds, according to the Ashlanders, but from treachery], and that subsequently the Tribunal confronted a defiant Dagoth Ur within Red Mountain, then drove Dagoth Ur beneath Red Mountain when he would not yield to their will.

4. While challenging the divinity of the Tribunal, the Dissidents do not challenge the sainthood or heroism of the Tribunal. In fact, the Dissident Priests advocate restoring many of the elements of Fundamentalist Ancestor Worship as practiced by the Ashlanders and by Saint Veloth. Exactly how this would work is debated inconclusively within the Dissident Priests.

5. Though no consensus exists among the Dissidents about whether the Nerevarine prophecies are genuine, all agree that the persecution of the Nerevarines is unjust and politically motivated. The Dissident Priests do not reject mysticism, revelation, or prophecy as part of the religious experience. The Dissidents have not resolved the issue of true or false insights. They have studied the mysticism of the Ashlander Ancestor Cults, in particular the rites of the Ashlander seers and wise women, and the prophecies of the Incarnate. Many among the Dissident Priests have come to believe that the Nerevarine prophecies are genuine, and have made a systematic study of prophecies recorded in Temple archives.

6. The Dissident Priests reject the authority of the Archcanon and the Ordinators. The temple hierarchy has been corrupted by self-interest and politics, and no longer acts in the best interests of the Temple or its worshipers. The Dissident Priests believe the Archcanon and Ordinators speak for themselves, not for the Tribunal. Within the Temple hierarchy it is an open secret that the Ordinators rely on abduction, terror, torture, and secret imprisonment to discourage heresy and dissent. The Dissident Priests feel the Ordinators are either out of control, or tools used to maintain a corrupt priesthood in power. Though the Dissident Priests acknowledge that most rank-and-file priests honor the best traditions of the Temple, they believe that many priests in higher ranks are interested more in love of authority and luxury than in the welfare of the poor, weak, and ignorant.

So this Temple of Mehra's has some dirty laundry, and not just lately, but maybe three thousand years of it. I can definitely see the love and hate. That leaves the question of what the Empire wants with this information. Are they planning a night of long knives, taking apart the troublesome Temple hierarchy with a co-opted False Incarnate? No, this is Uriel Septim the bloody Seventh we have here. The Temple could be discredited fairly easily, though, dividing the more troublesome elements in politics and society. The Sixth House cult could serve as an excellent excuse there. But it's not really the Empire that's hurting here. The ebony still flows, and their grip is firm as ever. Maybe some symptom of the Emperor's sickness, and that simulacrum heir nonsense. With Nibennium in such a state, the Elder Council must be seeing instability everywhere.

More good thoughts to doze off with, I know. Gallenus once called me the little soldier for my ability to fall asleep anywhere, a talent the persisted into adolescence. So go ahead and add a silt strider to the list, a worthy addition by any standard.

And then, the third dream. I have never been much of a dreamer, so I must be turning into a wisewoman, being on home turf. The same figure returns again, and since he does not introduce himself, I have named him Maskyface. This time he _smiles through _his mask and reached a powerful, desiccated arm towards me in a friendly sort of way. His nailless hand reaches effortlessly, painlessly into my chest, seeking around for my heart, and the revulsion jolts me away, slamming my head into a piece of chitin. I know it terrifies me into waking, but I nevertheless have the unshakable recollection of listening to him talk at length, on and on. The words skitter away instantly.

Apparently I have made a scene while unconscious, because the passengers have shifted away from me imperceptibly. The Dunmer in particular look mortified. Our strider has stopped, and for a moment I wonder whether my night terrors have provoked some emergency. Instead, however, we appear to be halted on the road, with a several dozen legionaries milling about in front of us. They have a pair of carts, pile high with tall clay jars an barrels, and in the kresh at the roadside kneel six or seven bound men. I lean out of the cockpit, gripping the spongy cap of an emperor parasol to steady myself. Sai be good, they're caught some smugglers.

"I'm dismounting here," I call out on a whim. The mahout looks back with an irate expression. Now he has to rig the rope ladder all over again, with Pelagiad only an hour back along the road. His sluggishness begins to look obstructive, so I press a few coins into his hand and gather my new satchel the four books inside. My second impromptu descent from a strider is much more convenient than the first, but I am rushing and almost lose my footing anyhow. It always was easier to climb a tree than a wavy ladder.

My shoes crunch into the rich Ascadian earth for the first time, tiny insects haloing my head. The prisoners are having their rope bindings swapped out for iron manacles, and over there's the cave where the goods were stored. A trio of armored orc emerge from the entrance, rolling four heavy barrels between them. I identify the most hassled-looking officer in sight, a tanned Breton sweating under his helmet even in the cool night breeze.

"Hail, soldier. What's the take?" Is this a passing imitation of Caius' tone? He does get very Imperial when the skooma act isn't on.

"Eh? Mostly just the taxed liquor, only a trace of monopoly good—wait, who the hell are you?"

Is it noisy enough out here? The strider starts grunting, so yes.

"I'm keeping tabs on things for Sir Caius Cosades." I tap the pommel of my blade as if that means something. "You were saying?" Either it's the tone that gets it, or the added 'sir,' because the name clearly means nothing to him.

"Oh, just take a look for yourself. Only interesting stuff is in those square crates up front."

You know I will. A salute, and I'm up on top of the nearest cart. Booze, booze, glass shavings, potions of some sort, square crate. The lid pops off easily, revealing a layer of rushes. Down underneath, however, stand lovingly-arranged rows of red statuettes. Or I suppose that they are statues; they aren't humanoid, although I imagine the outline of head and shoulders, two slits for eyes and two knobbly horns. They appear fashioned out of packed grey ash, with red highlights that prove to be some sort of raised metal lattice about the sides.

Surely this isn't a taxed trade item? I grab hold of one—

"Arkayprotects!"

—and my entire arm shudders, or maybe just my head. The dream flashes behind my eyes, and five fingers clutch my heart. I stuff one of the statues into my satchel with such reflexive speed that no one notices. Addhiranirr, you are a damned useful cat.

The strider has since moved off, and despite the ponderousness of its movements as it fades into the dark distance, I know that the swiftest Khajiit could never catch it. What's more, the legionaries back there have Pelagiad's insignia, not Moonmoth's, so I'm on my own for the trip back to Balmora. Oh well. It's half the distance I walked before, and I slept a little, so why not just keep on through the night? There's always the Fort as a possible waystation. Get down to it, then, through the fragrant Ascadian evening, with Masser and Secunda casting shadows through the big-leafed trees. The lagoons are thunderous with insects, amphibians and night birds, enough for my tired mind to switch back and forth between Vvardenfell and Nibenay. Maybe for the first time, I don't miss home. Truth is, I was trapped on that archipelago, with Gallenus and a bunch of orphans going nowhere. All the happiness I remember was actually in those wilderness days, and that's what Vvardenfell recalls. The people here have more space, less stone pressing in on their minds, and I like tangling wits with them. Hell, am I not a born city girl after all?

By the time the sign for Balmora points out a lefthand turn, my sanguine assessment of the journey begins to falter. This means Foyada Mamaea. Only a few miles of it, true, but still Vvardenfell's biggest foyada, alone at night. That road back there was longer than I could have believed, too. Wish I had my staff.

The road intersect the foyada through a raincut canyon in the ridge-wall, several hundred feet of steep incline, then down to the volcanic pavement below. I tick through the ways to die in here, remembering the stories of the ex-caravaner who shared my strider on the way down. The foyada won't fill without warning, of course, but if it did, could I scramble up those slick, dusty slopes fast enough? How far above the lava do you have to get to avoid roasting like a pig? The dead trees scratch at the moons like spits designed for the purpose.

I get through without incident, of course, forgetting how short the passage on the strider was, two days before (I had barely had time to get my eyes' fill before we exited the ravine). Sure, I had to kick a few kwama foragers to death, but that comes with the territory. I ended up almost too exhausted to pay for the privilege of Fort Moonmoth's stables.


	12. Chapter 12

"Run into many smugglers in your time here?" I figure Todwendy already knows more than she should, and there's no point fighting it. We have just separated, falling winded onto different benches in the Fighters Guild training yard.

"Smugglers? Sure, I worked for the Hlaalu, but don't presume that I'm completely criminal." She drops the staff, today's sparring session apparently over, and I do the same. The deadly Redguard is my equal, despite her lack of familiarity with the weapon. Her speed and ferocity made our duels a harrowing, bruising affair, but I held my ground. And then there's the reward of seeing her thin kresh fiber clothes drenched in sweat. Her skin glistens like some sort of exhausted bronze statue.

"Well I thought you might know all types. You got us in here, and turns out the Fighters Guilds is fairly... that..."

"Ha!" She whips her head about, trying to banish the locks of hair struck to her forehead. "Even so, I never had much to do with _Vvardenfell_ smugglers. That's your department, remember?"

The ash statue is with Caius now, along with all the other results of my Vivec mission last week. He is skeptical that the trifle is the Sixth House cargo our Khajiit source alluded to, but had Antabolis look it over anyways. That was a dead end, so now it's bound for the Mages Guild, sometime this evening. Once I work up the nerve to transport the damned thing there.

Todwendy reaches into the satchel containing her day clothes. And holy hell, is that an apple? Where did she get that? She tosses the precious Western gem to me, taking another for herself. Before I can thank her, she retrieves the paralyzing mask as well, and the thanks die in my mouth.

"What are you bringing that out for."

"Don't worry; no one is taking a dirt nap today." She puts her index finger in the eye socket and twirls to delicate artifact in slow circles. "I always wished for some sort of arcane talent, you know."

"Didn't know your people went for that too often."

"Well, yes and no. All Hammerfell's obsessed with stories of Alik'r sorcery and Yokudan sword magic; it's just the Mages Guild variety they don't think much of. And I've never lived in the homeland anyways." She sets the mask on the bench with sudden reverence. "Come over here."

This is going nowhere I like, but I obey because the smell of her gives me that down low tickle.

"Is this really the place for this?"

"Just touch it. You have a knack for this; I know you won't knock yourself out again." Easy for you to say, hotlips. It's like sticking my hand into a candleflame, in the moment before you feel the heat. But the mask doesn't bite this time.

"Well? Naleva?" By the Divines, there it is. The lacquered wood lets me in this time, and I can stroke the flowing contours of the enchantment, picking at loose threads of it like— "If you could only see your face!"

"What about my face?" She's grinning at me now.

"You have that trickster wrapped around your little finger, don't you?"

"I..."

"...know less about enchanting than I do, don't you? Shameful ignorance." She shifts on the bench in her good humor, and our thighs brush together. Heat and damp. "What I know, Naleva, is that when an enchantress has an implanted spell well in hand, she can apply it to other objects. Since you remind me of my younger self, why not let me live vicariously as well? I want to see what you can do."

"Do?"

"I'll need this mask when I leave Vvardenfell. We're both in a dangerous line of work, after all. You're a decent fighter so far, but imagine what you could be if you duplicated the enchantment with that staff there. Now _that_ would keep you alive without my help."

"Are you leaving soon?" Chuna is in Ald'ruhn for the week, and she is more a friend than anyone.

Todwendy laughs.

"Don't change the subject; I'll miss your funny face too. I'm talking about lifesaving craftsmanship, here. Let's hit the Mages Guild today. They're right next door."

"Don't we need soul gems for that?"

"You can buy them on premises. And the robes have all the other equipment on hand as well."

"Those are expensive."

She tucks the mask back into her satchel and pitches her apple core over the wall into some unlucky Balmoran's market stall awning.

"So doesn't your boss pay you? He asks some ratty jobs of you. Ask for an advance. How was Vivec, by the way?"

"Pretty much how you'd expect."

"And what am I to expect? I've never been."

I blink in surprise in that, having assumed that Todwendy's experiences and ability in every way outstrip my own. Except maybe when it comes to paralyzing people.

"I'll ask about money for a soulgem. But I wouldn't know what to do with it."

"I've read about it. And the mages will charge us for the use of their facilities in any case, so they'll be on hand to help."

It occurs to me that she is once again offering assistance on a whim. The realization of ingratitude shows on my face, and it must have shown.

"It's settled, then. We'll go see the mumblers."

"Alright. But sometime tonight. Sunset or so. I need to go see C—"

"Careful, Naleva. Some unfriendly people are as pretty as I am."

For once she senses that her needling has gone too far. 'Sunset,' I repeat, and make for Cosades' house.

Even as I cross the Odai, something is not right. The locals tend not to loiter around the dwelling, as if Caius' desire for sugar and solitude wards them off. But as I close in on the upper terraces, one figure has not moved from his doorstep. This fellow is standing bolt upright, strange in an Argonian, as if standing guard with that bow of his. Ambiguous lizardfolk expressions be damned, it is certainly a scowl he directs at my approach.

"Who goes there?"

"What do you mean, 'who?'"

"No visitors."

"I'm not a visitor. I have business here."

Caius' voice sounds from within.

"Let her through, Nine-Toes." Not even that recommendation nets me any good will from the Argonian, I note.

The house is unusually well-lit. Another shirtless evening for Cosades, but this time because of the great bloody bandage swaddling his chest. With a shock, I notice the naked corpse lying in his bed.

"What in—"

"Do keep your voice down, Naleva. Come and take a look at my attacker."

"This fellow atta..." It isn't actually a Dunmer corpse. At least not anymore. The thing is as tall than any Altmer I've seen, its limbs and torso distorted in some subtle way I cannot quite define. Its musculature is _off, _providing the impression of freakish strength and undernourishment. My dreams contain something similar, in a more imposing form. This one seems to be decomposing, as the grey particles of its skin are flaking off onto the bedsheets in the form of fine dust.

"It broke down my door last night." He rolls the carcass onto his back and I think I may have clutched his arm in a moment of weakness. If not, I probably wanted to.

"It has no face!" To be precise, everything between chin and brow was scooped out, leaving a crescent-shaped black abyss. Marks on the rim of the great horrific cavity left me convinced that the husk had done it himself. Peering inside, I could see no evidence of skull or brains, even though half of the head's thickness was still excavated. The wound was simply lined with more of the same sallow blackish skin.

"No need to recoil so, Naleva. Nine-Toes has assured me that this is not a corprus walker. I am waiting for Antabolis to verify it as a Sixth House beast."

It's then I notice my ash statue standing on his dining table.

"Scuttling Hell! You didn't leave that out all night, did you?"

"Why, no. It has been in a footlocker. I expect you to keep the appointment at the Mages Guild."

"And did you have dreams?" Wrong tone of voice there.

"No." The unspoken question is, 'did you?' "Have you shared _all_ your information with me, Naleva?"

"Of course. Everything I turned up."

He flips the ash creature back over. I can't for the life of me fathom why he would lay the disgusting thing down in his own bed.

"Very well. Take that statue across the river and see what you can find out."

If I was hesitant to touch the mask, the statue is worse, but Caius is watching so I grip the neck in my fist. No waking dreams this time.

"I had a request."

"Hmm?"

"Despite me nonviolent role here, I have been in two fights since accepting your assignments, one of them fatal. If this is to go on, I would like to be better prepared."

"You have no serious mission at the moment, and the Blades agents I mentioned will provide instruction if you ask them."

"I meant more in the way of equipment. Your stipends are ample, but I can't know how long they are going to continue. Rather than buy gear, I feel the need to save—"

"Fine. Spend whatever you have now and I will reimburse you."

"I appreciate it."

Cosades goes back to looking at the corpse, thinking too hard to stop me from exiting the room with the statue under my arm for all to see.

Upon crossing the bridge, a Dunmer in a patchy robe fell to his knees at the sight of it, but at the moment I didn't care to give him a second glance. Todwendy met me at the guild entrance, leaning against pillar with dusk's shadows blanking out her face.

"Well met again. How are your bruises treating you?"

"First tell me you feel yours." We enter, apparently disturbing the crimson-eyed woman inside. "You can't actually be present for this meeting of mine, you know."

"Naturally. I will go an inquire about enchanting. Did you get the coin."

"I have a few hundred left over."

"No matter. If it works I'll pay half."

Before I can turn on her to exclaim on her open handedness, she has launched me down the hall with my statue. The second floor has only a few rooms, so finding Galbedir isn't hard. A pinched-looking young Bosmer in a garish yellow robe, she seems disappointed she can't complain of my lateness.

"Naleva, I presume?"

"Aye. I'll keep the explanations short. I'd like you to examine this object here and tell me about any magical properties." I hand over the statue.

"A very... native, item, isn't it?" Is she worried I'll be offended.

"The very nativest. Is your analysis likely to take time?"

I see her debating whether or not to give me the runaround and put on some arcane show.

"Not at all." He better angels prevail. "I can tell you right now that there is no conventional, that is standard school Aetherial, magic to it. ...what I can say is that it serves as a conduit of some sort."

"A conduit of what?"

"It's usually some sort of communication. Surveillance? Messaging? Religious communion? There's a whole range of possibilities. There's a chance I could pin it down more exactly, but that _would _take more time. And money. A week, perhaps."

"I'm not sure on that. Let me think on it and come back."

Yes, let me think on it. I am gut-sure that this is the item the Sixth House is smuggling off and around the island. If they are smuggling them, the statues must be easily recognizable as profane items, which means the Temple would be able to identify it. Damn, why didn't I think of that before. Maybe Mehra Milo made me flighty about the Tribunal folks. Wouldn't want to see her copper head in a floating moon cell...

"Will that be all?"

"I think so." With statuettes all over Morrowind, the Sixth House has a network of... conduits. Messages through dreams, with the figure in the golden mask. Do they give orders that way? Then why the mass production, and why reach out to me. Caius was attacked mere nights after holding one of those statues in his house. Are they only meant for Dunmer? Surveillance, Galbedir says.

Todwendy's cheery face pops into the room and my pondering.

"Are you two done?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Turns out, Galbedir is the resident enchanter as well, so we aren't done."

I won't inflict the full process on you. Towendy proved impossible to satisfy or shame, willfully ignoring Galbedir's desire to close up for the night. I was supposed to be doing the enchanting myself, so the wood elf was already losing out on the bulk of her fee, despite the four hundred drake soul gem purchase. The mage offered to tell me what sort of creature had filled it, but I decided not to know.

The enchanting altar had a sort of metaphysical halfway house that allowed me to repeatedly duplicate the mask's charm until I got it right, only committing it to the soul gem and staff (which Todwendy dropped out to fetch, allowing me to apologize in her absence) at the very end. As Galbedir warned early on, the mask started smoldering at one point, the guild mage saving it from destruction with a swift cantrip. Somehow it all came together at the end, much to Todwendy's satisfaction and Galbedir's shock. I think the Bosmer was somewhat unnerved that an amateur could pull off such a delicate, academic operation. My staff now pulses at any touch, announcing itself and the rippling malice within. At the time I was too mistrustful of it to be proud, and a little mortified when Todwendy urged me to test it on her. I looked at Galbedir, realizing that she was too annoyed with my companion to fear for her safety.

As we left the guild, though, the crazy raga checked the plaza for onlookers and went into a fighting crouch, urging me on with an impish grin. I gave her a gentle swat on the thigh, stilling the yelp in her throat as every muscle in her body went slack and dumped her onto the paving stones. For a slow count of five she lay there, her chest heaving helplessly up and down. She could not speak, but I could see curiosity and wonder, rather than pain, in her eyes. Lucky that Chuna was gone from Balmora, or else she would have wanted to test it again.

Her idea to enchant the staff rather than the sword was a sound one, giving my makeshift spear a lethal and nonlethal end, or providing me with a debilitating, unobtrusive walking stick. Caius assures me that I will attract less attention traveling armed, as the role of a freelance mercenary is easy to assume. He's right; I got more curious looks on the strider to Vivec than the strider to Ald'ruhn this morning.

I sat next to a talkative Breton who filled my ears with everything I could have wanted to know about Ald Skar. He began talking as we passed through Caldera, and my morning fatigue revived at the sight of the surprisingly pleasant West Gash. If these rocky moors lack Ascadia's idyllic quality, they also lack its humidity, insects and slaves. The Breton was not the only outlander on board, and the number of non-Dunmer on this island still amazes me. Remarking on that, this fellow (who could have left Wayrest yesterday) ticked off the list of settlements that had existed before the opening of settlement. Vivec, Balmora, Ald'ruhn here, Gnisis, Sadrith Mora.

"Everything else is new. Except for some of the Telvanni towers, which aren't really towns, and a handful of coastal villages."

"I would have guessed that Seyda Neen had been there since the dawn of time."

"But really, just a few years. Same with all the new growth around Vivec."

"Everyone must have vacated after the year of Sun's Death."

"Ah, another student of history, I see. The year of Red Mountain, yes. All but the Ashlanders fled, and the Temple kept most of them from coming back."

Just then the mahout blew his horn, and Ald'ruhn's inimitable Redoran watchtowers pocked their keyhole heads through the haze. It was blowing perhaps one quarter of an ash storm, the wind a gentle rasp that only carried enough sediment to irritate the eyes. I alone chose to expose myself to the punishment by looking out at the town above the sheltering lip of the cockpit. Except for the breached walls and the handful of crustacean buildings near the strider port, there was little enough to see.

While we dock, I go over Caius' assignment. Find Hassour Zainsubani, an Ashlander who left the wastes to become a wealthy trader. I'm to ask the usual questions about the Nerevarine cult from a firsthand source, but also seek a general education in Ashlander customs and concepts of courtesy. Is Cosades thinking of having me turn diplomat? And here I thought he knew my strengths. At least there was another nice stipend for this trip, plus the cost of the soul gem sitting in a separate coffer at his house.

The Breton escorts me to the Ald Skar in, in his estimation one of the city's more reputable establishments. After doing his duty to inform me that he is bound for the prestigious district Under-Skar (the shell is still obscured by blowing ash, and if I try not to focus on its curving silhouette, the sight of it doesn't kick in the old survival instincts too much) we part. The innkeeper says to expect Hassour by evening, still hours off. Or I can wait by the caravanserai, where he'll show up if the weather doesn't delay him. I opt to walk around the city instead, mountain wind be damned. Todwendy pointed out with some justice that I tend to drink a lot early in the day, so best to avoid the inn until sunset. I had not thought to rebuke her for the unwarranted motherly chiding, as she announced her imminent departure from Balmora and thence Ebonheart, dismaying me momentarily. If I can conclude my business here in a day, there will be time for a farewell.

Redoran's Temple is rather small, surprisingly so for what I know of that House's piety, squatting beneath the bluffs at the edge of town. I had not guessed that there could be entire cities in the ashlands, yet the ashlands this surely is. There is no real comparison to the narrow waste near Seyda Neen, nor even the trench of Foyada Mamaea. After all, it's the weather that stings but the expanse that kills, and the Redoran hide beneath their crab shell in a vast ocean of dark, lashing hostility. For all the stories of their exploits, many doubtless true, the Three are sweetlander gods, scorned by the true inhabitants of these harsh lands, and maybe it is appropriate that their Temple looks so isolated and forlorn. Short miles beyond its down sits the Ghostfence, that humming, imperfect barrier that seems to provide the Dunmer less shelter every day. What use is when the Blight rides in on the air? How do you build walls against dreams? The Tribunal's modest house of worship even looks shuttered or derelict, with racers cavorting about over its roof. For a moment I ponder entering. The Balmora monk said my ancestors lay to the northeast of Balmora, and that's where we are, right? Or thereabouts. But I don't think my reception would be as warm this time. Already I suspect that my guide was not an orthodox monk, but rather some devotee of the Temple's less conventional orders. He seemed half an Armiger, to me.

The ash has ceased to bother me; I must be growing more Dunmeri by the minute. I stand to gawk at Ald Skar for several minutes, but to be a tourist in Ald'ruhn is inexcusable. My restlessness takes over, and I end up pacing the insides of the walls of this town that is so fascinating in its deserted, inhospitable meanness. As the wind slackens, I notice a sort of procession exiting the Temple, a sort of parade in traveling clothes. They have no baggage, bearing only banners and censers, so I guess that it is a ritual visit to the Ghostfence. I follow several dozen paces behind, trying to look pious and un-banditlike with my spear. If there's time in the afternoon, I will see about getting a mount installed for the blade. I can't fasten the hilt as securely as Todwendy can, not with just leather straps. I really wish she wasn't bound for Colovia.

The thought hits me, so very belated. Colovia is, in fact, a part of Cyrodiil, however loosely. Todwendy has already risked life and limb and expended gold on my account, might she also be willing to take me with her... home? The prospect leaves me breathless until I slow to a crawl and the pilgrims draw nearly out of sight ahead. Surely, there are rational concerns to weigh, factors in favor and opposed, but it proves exceedingly difficult to arrive at them. Her and I, on a ship. Nibennium, land and language I know. If there is an evening strider to Balmora, she will certainly still be at the Lucky Lockup.

At the same time, though, do I want to cut and run? Wait, run from what? Do I have anything here, besides a tenuous association with... the Blades? Why is that so hard to walk away from? And yet, it is. In Nibennium I would face the same dilemma of survival all over again, assuming my fellow orphans have not met with sudden success. I would have Todwendy, but will she really suffer me as a hanger-on, attempting unsteadily to follow her trade? The gap between is less than it was several short days ago, but has she ever mentioned anything other than my ability to make my own way _here_, without her?

In the end, it's the distant, throaty throb that puts this episode of indecision to rest, at least for the moment. The Ghostfence has crept up on me despite my glacial pace, and the Temple folks have cast themselves down into the ash of the ravine before it, in a variety of supplicatory poses. It's not a wall; it's a piece of a blue sky brought down to the stormy ashlands, shot through with wisps of white cloud. A child's summer dream in Mournhold, humming there cutting the valleys and ridges in two. Only after the initial sighting do you recognize the immense pillars, great constructions of ageless Velothi stone, carved with netch-sized sculptures of the Three. The spirit walls extend downwards into the ground, perfect incorporeal planes that adhere—or perhaps hang from—the arcing, ropelike masonry bands strung between towers. Each of the soaring pylons bellows, an echo of the million voices of the million ancestral souls contained within, and the foghorn constructions on either side spew steam. Most of the water vapor evaporates before reaching the ground, but where the ridgelines rear up, the pilgrims can stand in a vanishing cascade of holy spittle and venerate it all.

I never did approach the group, instead walking back to Ald'ruhn ahead of it. On three separate occasions, blighted cliffracers crossed over from the Red Mountain side and tried for a chunk of faithful Velothi flesh. The Temple errants fended them off ably, and I stuck considerably closer from then on. Once back in town, I decided that the Fighters Guild (this chapter is supposed to be the honest one, after all) was worth my custom. Their poleturner attached my the shortsword more securely to the staff (thankfully not paralyzing himself on the business end), and I bought a more pedestrian dagger as a replacement sidearm. He also referred me to an independent Balmora smith who could forge an easily removable mount out of metal.

The evening meal finds me in the lower common room of the Ald Skar Inn. My thoughts on Todwendy's departure are no more developed than they were before, but I know for sure that I am not going to be getting on a strider tonight. There is work to do. When Hassour enters the room, his table set for him in advance, I do not need anyone to point him out for me. Who else could look so entirely an Ashlander, while dressed in Velothi traveling gear and sumptuous garments of a successful caravan merchant. His whole bearing, mohawk on down, has both the austere haughtiness of a nomad patriarch and the commanding self-assurance of a man who has made himself wealthy. I count off the minutes as he composes himself for dinner, and move towards his table as he waits for service.

"Your pardon, master, but I knew no other way to approach you. Might I have your ear?" I can address a Dunmer (sort of), and I can address a man of high station, but neither really fits here.

"You might have waited until after I have eaten, for one. Is your business urgent?"

"My master is anxious for my return, yes. My name is Naleva of Polefel."

"May you bless and be blessed. Tell me of your business, and perhaps we will deal after dinner."

"In truth, I have an unusual request. I wish to learn of manners and politeness among the Ashlanders, how to approach in the proper fashion. And some simple questions concerning their beliefs."

"I see. An intriguing object, albeit one that cannot profit me." He glances over his shoulder, but the opening courses have still not arrived. "Very well, Naleva of Polefel, you shall learn by doing. The most crucial aspect in opening discussion with an Ashlander is the giving of gifts."

He meets my eyes with a piercing gaze, and I motion for him to continue.

"A gift is a sign of courtesy among strangers, and affection among friends. Among strangers, a thoughtful gift is a sign that you are cautious, and considerate, and aware of the other's wants and needs. Among friends, it is a private thing, and subtle, with great risks, for the test of the gift is how well it is tailored to the receiver. Therefore, Naleva, why not leave me in peace while I eat my dinner, and favor me with a gift when you return. Then we shall discuss whatever it is you seek."

He turns away, hands folded beneath his chin. I nod and retreat upstairs. A small bribe to the skeptical barkeep and I returned with a newly-purchased compilation of Ashlander poetry. His meal long done, Hassour sat reclined in the same common room, smoking a pipe in High Rock fashion.

"I laud your taste, Naleva of Polefel, be it by instinct alone or not." He flips through the thin volume with practiced fingers, arriving at a page near the end. "Here. One of my favorites, from the wise women of the Urshilaku." He pushes the book across the table towards me. "Read it aloud, if you would."

I hesitate. The room has gone quite quiet and the poetry is not in Dunmeris, so that excuse won't work. Is Blades work always this unpleasant?

"Rise from darkness, Red Mountain!  
>Spread your dark clouds and green vapors!<br>Birth earthquakes, shatter stones!  
>Feed the winds with fire!<br>Flay the tents of the tribes from the land!  
>Feed the burned earth with our souls!<p>

Yet never shall you have your rule over me.  
>Never shall I tremble or flinch from your power.<br>Never shall I yield my home and hearth.  
>And from my tears shall spring forth<br>The flowers of grassland springs."

After the close of that eternity of recitation, Hassour leans back in his seat and takes a long drag on the cigar. I swear I saw smoke come out of his ears.

"Your voice rings true, Naleva, wherever that face of yours may be from. I would make a mirroring gift to you, in the form of another book, if culture could be taught in such ways."

"Your knowledge will be gift enough."

"And the knowledge you seek is the most difficult to transmit. I will stick to the basics. You intend to go among the tribes quite soon?"

"I..." Somehow this hasn't occurred to me yet. "Yes." My reaction warrants a skeptical grunt.

"You have already taken part in the custom of gifts. In the future, eschew such poetry and stick to useful items. Tools and weapons. My people have never loved the written word, and I lament their ignorant scorn for such common yet potent magic. Things of beauty may sometimes please them, but only for the sake of its natural origin and display of cunning craftsmanship. A bauble you purchase at a Balmora jeweler's may be met with scorn and soon traded away. If trade is your object, however, gold is an acceptable offering for a like-minded tribesman."

He gestures for another cup and pours from the bottle at his elbow. To my surprise, fine Cyrodiilic brandy, the likes of which I scarcely tasted in the province itself.

"Never enter a yurt or village without invitation. To do so is to invite a challenge. One crucial distinction foreigners must attempt to make is between a challenge for sport and a challenge for honor. Many warriors hide their emotions, and the context may not always make it clear. It is acceptable to decline a sparring match, but shrink from a challenge to your honor and no member of that tribe will deal with you in honesty or respect again. Your gender may provide some protection here, but women challenge as well."

"And thanks be for that. From what I hear, a duel with an Ashlander would be injurious to my health."

He seems to examine my words for flattery.

"True enough. The single greatest obstacle to dealings with the tribes is their general hostility. Most Ashlanders wish all the foreigners and their false gods could be driven from Morrowind. Failing that, they at least wish the foreign devils would leave them in peace. It shameful to attack unarmed persons, but Ashalnders reserve the right to raid the settled people, and kill without hesitation anyone who offends them or their clan laws. No Ashlander is fool enough to make war against the Empire, but if such a war might be won, many might cheerfully give their lives to win such a war."

He motions for me to drink more, and I take the opportunity to cut in.

"That is all valuable insight, but not all my questions are so general. Specifically, I was hoping you could tell me about the Nerevarine cult."

"Ah. Now there's a subject. Is your employer merely curious, or flirting with illegality? Not even the Empire tolerates that old superstition, you know."

"So I have heard."

"Well then, all Ashlanders are born into an Ancestor cult, and the anticipation of the Nerevarine carries on in addition to that faith. It is a very small cult, headed by a very few wise women with the gift of prophecy, and some warrior-heroes who guard and protect the seers."

I sip the brandy to spur him on.

"The cult has not been influential for many generations, and will certainly continue to decline if Peakstar is truly dead. Although most Ashlanders share the sentiments of the prophecies, they think little of their promises and validity. Really, only the Urshilaku keep the faith nowadays."

"Is that a tribe?"

"Of the northwestern ashlands, and once of the entire West Gash." What is it on his face? Anger? wry wistfulness? "The Urshilaku play host to the last oracle of the prophecies, Nibani Maesa. Their Ashkhan is Sul-Matuul, a well-respected leader who doubles as Warrior-Protector of the cult."

"And would you know where to find the Urshilaku?"

He gazes at me in curiosity, and I crack a guilty smile despite myself. Heady stuff, this flin.

"I hope you will share your object, one day, for it is a fascinating errand your master sets you. The Urshilaku move with the herds, of course, but usually their camp lies close to the Sea of Ghosts. I could send word to your master next time I hear of their location, if he can be relied upon to pay the messenger."

"I would receive your messenger, and pay gladly."

That concluded our official business, but the conversation went on for some time. Hassour urged more brandy on me, eventually presenting a whole variety of Cyrodilic vintages with informed commentary and attentive examination of my reactions. He spent a good deal of money that night, and if I have little to report about our conversation, it is because I remember little of it. It was the first time that I had actually been well and truly drunk in Vvardenfell (have _that_, Todwendy!), and I only vaguely recall the stories of his Ashlander days, the nobility of their customs, his trading practices and his son (it was the only the brandy that made me look like a good bride for his heir, I'm sure).

Normally when I'm sleeping it off, I never dream. Not so, that night. The gold mask returns, no longer a shimmering outline but a fully-formed vision of complete clarity. He is more real in the dream than in the waking world. The usual shifting environment of the gone, presenting my visitor at a distance, and yet he filled up the entirety of the dreamspace, shutting out all else with his bulk. I almost didn't record his words. After all, what can the mere transcription possibly convey? What use is such shallow reduction and what an one say about such things anyways? But I was urged, so here it is.

"Lord Nerevar Indoril, Hai Resdaynia! Long forgotten, forged anew! Three belied you, three betrayed you! One you betrayed was three times true! Lord Voryn Dagoth, steadfast liegeman, faithful friend, bids you come and climb Red Mountain! Beneath Red Mountain, once again, break your bonds, shed cursed skin, and purge the n'wah from Morrowind!"

I lay in a sifting pale approximation of sleep after that, waking in the early morning without the head pounding I richly deserved. The equally indomitable Hassour had already gone to the caravanserai, the groggy barmaid grunted, so I stumbled out into the morning's fiery orange sun. All Skar was lit up by rays shooting through the remnants of predawn mist, and I stumbled slightly, turning to gawk at the massive stretch of shell, wider than the Foreign Quarter. Hassour was overseeing the preparation of pack guar when I entered, and greeted me with that Dunmeri warmth that so quickly follows hostility and suspicion. I rushed through the pleasantries.

"Hassour Zainsubani, might I beg your counsel a final time, in private? It will be brief."

He hesitates, fixing an underling with a stern glare until an answering gaze seems to satisfy him. We head outside to stand sheltered by an awning and the noise of livestock.

"What troubles you, Naleva of Polefel?"

"'Trouble' is the proper word, I fear. I could expect a judicious answer from only someone of your experiences." That's mostly true. "I have been dreaming."

He narrows his eyes.

"Surely you must mean something specifically... unusual by that."

"They are dreams _of _this place, only since I arrived, and they recur, showing me things I could not have known."

"Wise women are dream-seers, but it is not a gift likely to be found elsewhere." Except for every holy man on the street in Nibennium, that is. "And then there are the dream-sendings of the Sharmat, that drive the weak to madness and self-mutilation. Have you gained useful knowledge from these dreams, or have they affected your waking mind?"

"Not as such. The Sharmat, he is—"

"Dagoth Ur, scourge of all who walk the wastes."

"And he spreads his totems, and his dream with them," I murmur. "I dreampt in verse. I am called to Red Mountain by Voryn Dagoth, to shed cursed skin and drive the N'wah from Resdayn."

His nostrils flare at the words.

"It is not a dream of madness, thank Three." Which three, I wonder. "It is a test, of the sort often sent to warriors in the Ashlands. Dagoth Ur wants you for his own. He recognizes you as Dunmer, curiously enough, and invites you to join him in expelling the N'wah, the outlanders and slaves."

"Rather optimistic, isn't he?"

"Do not trifle with these matters, Naleva. His persuasion can take less resistible forms." A horn sounds from the lead of the caravan, now assmebled. "Keep the faith until we meet again, and guard your soul from the sickness of the mountain. It is the sort of affliction that makes me fear so for my son."

"My deepest thanks, Hassour Zainsubani. May you walk in sight of the ancestors."

"And may you find yours." His echo of the Balmora monk leaves me stunned, and he strides away in the interim. I'll just have to wonder what he would have thought about Dagoth's form of address.


	13. Chapter 13

Silt striders lull you to sleep with the gentle sloshing movement of their gait. I spent the return journey from Ald'ruhn dreading the arrival of another dream, and stared out at the West Gash so intently that my eyes were still stinging on arrival at Caius' house. Didn't fall asleep, though. My entrance that afternoon was the most hesitant since the first visit. For several minutes I sat on his lower roof steps, rolling pebbles around on the mudbrick stoop. Once inside, I found the master of the Blades dressed almost decorously, his bedding free of Blight corpses and cleaned spotlessly.

"Good day, Naleva. Report, if you please."

"Nothing in writing this time, but I have a lock on the current location of the Urshilaku tribe, the foremost followers of the Nerevarine cult."

He tucks a short missive into a pocket somewhere and moves towards the lockbox under his bed, speaking as he does so.

"Your work is immaculate as always. Such competence greatly assuages my general incredulity where you case is concerned. If any of my agents distrust you as much as Nine-Toes the other day, you can tell them that I've promoted you to Journeyman."

"Er, thanks. Incredulity, you say?" That little strongbox has one hell of a complex lock, but he soon returns to the table with a short stack of papers.

"Have a seat. It is time for you to know everything I do." He passes a hand over his eyes and forehead, as if the act of divulging information brings on a headache. "You were released from prison on the highest authority, as I have said."

"And arrested on the lowest."

"Be that as it may, your presence in Imperial custody brought you to the attention of... it is difficult to do the particulars of this justice, the Emperor's privy council. The details of your background were verified by... divine means, and you were sent to Vvardenfell in the hopes that you would cooperate with the Blades without any explanations that would give away state secrets. You were not the first sent, but you were the first to cooperate, and the first who was not a pureblood Dunmer."

"Glad I could be such a servile tool."

"Stay serious, if you please. From now on you are useless to us except as a free woman. You have taken no oaths for a reason."

"I will stay serious when you emerge from your cryptic habits." He meets my eyes at that, betraying something like amusement.

"Fair enough. The Emperor was advised by his Moth Priest seers that an orphaned prisoner—you—had the appearance of satisfying the conditions of the Nerevarine prophecies. The _appearance_, I cannot stress that enough. It's all in the decoded version of the package you brought me." He pushes the documents across the table. "At first I though the Empire simply intended for me to create a convincing impostor, but your findings leave me less sure."

He searches my face, which I knew remained perfectly impassive. There is nothing but an immense stillness in my mind, although I know that the disbelief must be seething, somewhere down out of sight with a lid on. I collect the papers.

"The dictates of secrecy become more severe now. We do not need another Peakstar who is an Imperial spy to boot."

"What happens next?"

"You read those papers, at length, somewhere you can wrap your mind around the extent of this, and then burn them. After that, surely you can guess."

"Urshilaku."

"Yes. Meet with these Ashlanders and have them test you against the prophecies. Your experience on this point now equals my own, so I have little in the way of guidance for you henceforth. The path is your own." Just then I notice a handwritten copy of the Stranger on the table, well-worn with repeated folding and various stains. He meets my eyes with a level gaze, those flinty irises and cutting brows for the first time simple and unguarded. Cosades is too long and deep in his role to _show_ anything in his face, but for the first time the guardedness falls away, and with it the relation of spymaster and informant. I do as I am silently bidden, tucking away the decoded missive and taking most of my stored earnings away with me.

I walked up the slope behind the house, continuing until the point where the wall disappeared into the outcropping. Continuing on atop the wall, drawing glances from the Hlaalu patrolmen below, I paused on the slight arch over the Odai. Looking north towards the yellow-green of the West Gash, with Red Mountain's angry peek just showing beyond, I read. By some miracle, none of the pages blew Imperial secrets away in the wind.

_Spymaster Caius Cosades_

_Knight-Errant of the Imperial Order of Blades_

_Director of Imperial Intelligence in Vvardenfell District, Eastern Provinces_

_ I have the honor to acquaint you with his Majesty's wishes concerning one Naleva, Nibennium resident and individual of no rank or consequence. _

True enough, that. It goes on much as Caius said it would, about the prophecies and my orphanage. The language is bureaucratic excellence, impeccably formal yet gently chiding Caius not to scoff at such 'ancient superstitions' in tones both obscure and familiar. I almost smile at how the letter prompts him to open new inquiries into the Nerevarine cult (references to the threat of the Sixth House are highly oblique) without preconceptions or biased sources. Only once does the paper swim before my eyes, when the cautious diction of Glabrio Bellienus, Personal Secretary to the Emperor broaches the topic of the moth priests. I had recognized the one at my interrogation, but most of his ilk are simple ancestor worshipers and animal magicians, raising funds by providing noble Nibenese families with silks. Here, though, the words 'dreamsleeve intercept' stand out, suggesting that the Emperor's most anointed seers plucked me from prison, perhaps after consulting the Elder Scrolls themselves. Can Dagoth Ur and Uriel Septim both be wrong? Peakstar, how I'd like to meet you, now that you're surely dead. How is Mehra Milo doing, I wonder?

With evening approaching, the watch have lit the braziers at the wall's west end. I drop the papers into the flames, pausing to warm my hands (although the dusk is balmy) until every fragment is consumed. The warmth stays with me on the way past the noisy cornerclubs beneath hightown, the guilds, the plaza, all the way to the Lucky Lockup with its welcome drafts.

"Naleva?"

I realize that I have been staring through Todwendy's welcoming face, right into the wall behind her head. My eyes snap back into the proper plane.

"Oh! Hello—sorry."

"You look your favorite pet insect just died."

"Hmm." I don't notice the Dunmer joke for a number of minutes.

"Need a drink?" She takes my silence as affirmative, and steers me to a table.

"As you know, I am leaving tomorrow." She grins. "In the morning." Is that a tease? I scowl. "Strider to Ebonheart, then a boat to the _other_ Ebonheart. And bumpy roads all the way to Cheydinhal. Don't know why the damned Houses won't let the Imperials build half-decent roads."

"That's the route I came in by, pretty much."

"She speaks! What has got into that greyish head of yours?"

"Just some interesting news. I think I'm headed north."

"Good! So you won't be moping around here without me." She slaps a piece of fabric on the table, embroidered with the sigil of House Hlaalu and guaranteeing her passage to Cyrodiil." There is a bit of compulsion, located somewhere around my stomach, trying to drag myself onto that ship with her, and escape. Free again, to whatever end. But the rest of me knows perfectly well that I am staying right here. There is no walking away from this, whatever exactly it means to me.

Todwendy leans forward suddenly and picks a piece of charred paper from my lapel.

"Been burning bridges?" She chuckles and flicks it back towards me. Thank the divines, it's only the letters E and N. "Say, that boss of yours isn't sending you on more suicide errands, is he? You don't seem too pleased with going north."

"No." My voice is level and steady and surprises me. "I will be just fine from now on."

She looks at me for a moment and then raises her cup.

"Let's drink to that. You know it's the truth, to. You can kill anyone you want, if you get the jump on them with that knockout stick of yours. Or just slit their hamstring and run away." A pause, cup still suspended. "Do try and not to kill too many people, Naleva. It makes a person worse company."

"And will we share our company in the future?"

"Of course! May we meet again."

"May we meet again."

After that it was time to get far more drunk than I ever was with Hassour, spending rather too much of Caius' coin in the process. But I decided that Todwendy has expended too much of her own on my account. Chuna will be mortified that he missed it.

She even said she wanted to verify something, around the end of the night, and kissed me, just once. Her lips were rum and midsummer.


End file.
